LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap. Copyright No 

Shell! 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Christian Science, 



THE FALSE CHRIST OF 1866: 



AN EXAMINATION OF THE ORIGIN, ANIMUS, CLAIMS, 

PHILOSOPHICAL ABSURDITIES, MEDICAL FALLACIES 

AND DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OF THE NEW GOSPEL 

OF MENTAL HEALING. 



BY 

WILLIAM P. McCORKLE, 

PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, GRAHAM, N. C. 



"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe 
it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show- 
great signs and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive 
the very elect." — Matt. xxiv. 23, 24. 

"... Profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so- 
called : which some professing have erred concerning the faith." — 1 Timothy 
vi. 20, 21. 



RICHMOND, VA.: 
The Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Congress^ 
Office o f the 

DE0 16 1. 

Register of CopyrlgJ^ 



49895 







Copyright, 1899, 

BY 

J AS. K. HAZEN, Secretary of Publication. 



S£COND COPY, 



Printed by 

Whittet & Shepperson, 

Richmond, Ya. 






TO MY WIFE, 
LUTIE ANDREWS McCORKLE, 

A CHRISTIAN WHO BELIEVES THE "TESTIMONY OF JESUS," 

AND HAS FOUND GOD'S WORD A LAMP UNTO HER FEET 

AND A LIGHT UNTO HER PATH, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



In the Presbyterian Quarterly of July and October, 
1898, and April, 1899, I published a series of papers 
on Christian Science, covering most of the points 
discussed in the following pages. The favorable re- 
ception accorded to these papers, together with the 
advice of many friends, encouraged me to rearrange 
and revise them for publication in permanent form. 
In doing this, I have added such matter as was neces- 
sary to give the reader a complete view of the doctri- 
nal and other contents of the system. 

A special reason for a complete refutation of the 
errors of Christian Science lies in the incoherent and 
unattractive style of Mrs. Eddy's works. The culti- 
vated reader is apt to turn away from them in sheer 
weariness and disgust, unless actuated by some speci- 
ally strong motive in his efforts to wade through her 
jumbled arguments. Few books have ever been 
issued from the press that are so hard to comprehend 
in their statements, so puzzling in their inconsisten- 
cies, so illogical in their style, so botched in literary 
dress, and so brain-addling in their general contents, 
as are Science and Health and Unity of Good, Mrs. 
Eddy's principal works. Most of those who have, to 



6 Preface. 

my knowledge, attempted to read the former have 
given up the task in despair, bewildered and confused 
by the author's disconnected style and misty specula- 
tions. Ministers are sorely tempted to toss the book 
aside as being unworthy the attention of intelligent 
people, and as likely to exert small influence over the 
public mind. And yet, strange as it may seem, this 
book, Science and Health, is the chief oracle of God 
in the estimation of a quarter of a million of "Scient- 
ists," and is rushing through multiplied editions. 

I have written for the pew, rather than for the pul- 
pit. While wishing to give to busy pastors a satis- 
factory account of this dangerous enemy to revealed 
truth, I have desired especially to put the matter here 
given in such shape as to make it readily accessible 
to the man of business, the house-keeper, and even 
the school-girl, as well as to the whole multitude who 
have little taste for theological discussions. Avoid- 
ing, as far as possible, all technical terms, and seeking 
to present the subject in popular style, I have, in my 
discussion of the doctrinal bearings of the new gospel 
of healing, endeavored to let the Scriptures speak for 
themselves, rather than attempt argument on rational 
and philosophical grounds. I trust that I have suc- 
ceeded in showing that the system is anti-scriptural 
in every particular. 

Some topics, related to the philosophy of Christian 
Science, which have been touched upon incidentally 
in this discussion, deserve much fuller treatment just 



Preface. 7 

at this time, because of their frequent presentation in 
popular literature. Pantheism, always an intoxi- 
cating error, has been widely disseminated in our 
day. It was the most dangerous element in the relig- 
ious philosophy of Emerson, and, largely popularized 
by his essays, now saturates very much of what is 
supposed to be evangelical preaching. The preexis- 
tence of the human soul, reincarnation, and the final 
absorption of the human individuality into the Divine 
essence, are being affirmed, both directly and indi- 
rectly, in current poetry and fiction. I trust that some 
abler pen than mine will give to the church and to the 
world a refutation of this congeries of errors, which 
constitutes the back-bone and the digestive system, 
both of Christian Science and Theosophy. 

I would be ungrateful did I not acknowledge my 
indebtedness to many friends for timely aid and 
cheering words of encouragement while I was inves- 
tigating the subject of Christian Science. Their ap- 
preciation and approval have inspired me to continue 
my work in the hope of serving the cause of truth. 
To Rev. Dr. George Summey, of the Southwestern 
Presbyterian University, to Mrs. L. J. Moore, of 
Moulton, Texas, and to Miss Mary L. Atherton, of 
Boston, I am specially indebted for Christian Science 
literature, by means of which I have been rendered 
independent of other writers in my search into the 
mysteries of the new religion, and enabled to draw my 
information from original sources. To Rev. G. B. 



8 Preface. 

Strickler, D. D., of Union Seminary, I am under last- 
ing obligations for his kindness in examining the 
MS. of this volume. His warm approval encour- 
aged me to write, and now encourages me to publish, 
this defense of the faith. 

The volume of Rev. J. M. Buckley, D. D., on 
Faith Healing, Christian Science and Kindred Phe- 
nomena is the chief source from which I have drawn 
my material in discussing the mental healing features 
of the new gospel, and I count myself very much his 
debtor. Had he undertaken to present a refutation 
of Mrs. Eddy's theological vagaries as complete and 
overwhelming as is his refutation of her mental heal- 
ing philosophy, my task would have been rendered 
superfluous. None of the treatises on the subject of 
Mrs. Eddy's errors have, so far as I am aware, dis- 
cussed, save in a very fragmentary fashion, her radi- 
cal departures from evangelical truth, except the little 
volume of Mr. J. H. Bates on Christian Science and 
Its Problems. This, while it is an admirable discus- 
sion of the subject in some of its important bearings, 
is fatally vitiated by its evolutionary philosophy, by 
its tacit concessions to the destructive criticism now 
so popular in some quarters, and, most of all, by its 
practical abandonment of fundamental truths, such 
as the doctrines of salvation by grace, the vicarious 
nature of the atonement, and the necessity of regen- 
eration by the Spirit of God. 

In all my quotations from authorities, I have been 



Preface. 9 

careful to give the author's ipsissima verba. Refer- 
ences have been verified and pains taken to avoid even 
such inadvertent alterations as are liable to occur in 
copying. I have also corrected all errors discovered 
in the papers published in the Presbyterian Quarterly. 
One of these was the statement that, according to 
Mrs. Eddy, Adam was the man Jesus in a previous 
incarnation. Further study of her rather Delphic 
oracle on that point convinces me that what she 
means to assert is, not that Jesus was Adam, but that 
he was, in his first incarnation, the first spiritual man, 
and the first Science healer. The statement in ques- 
tion occurs in one of Mrs. Eddy's tracts, and I have 
not found it repeated in any of her larger works. 

I have been careful to give, in all my principal quo- 
tations from Science and Health, the wording of the 
154th edition of that work. It is possible that some 
of the choice phrases copied from an older edition, 
which was my authority for the citations given in my 
first and second Review papers, may be found altered 
or missing in the later editions of the book. It is one 
among many peculiarities of Mrs. Eddy's distinctively 
feminine inspiration that it always leaves her the 
womanly prerogative of changing her mind. Com- 
paring the verbiage of the 154th edition with that of 
the citations referred to, I find that her later inspira- 
tion has made her introduce sundry mathematical 
changes in the way of additions and subtractions, 
some rhetorical ones in the shape of paraphrases, and 



io Preface. 

some geographical ones in transposing numerous 
passages backward or forward to other parts of her 
book, as suited her sacred whim. These changes 
made it impossible, in a few instances, to find in 
the later edition the words quoted from the former. 
None of the changes which Mrs. Eddy has made in 
the expression of her doctrines, however, have made 
any change in the doctrines themselves, which are 
always more or less indefinite in statement, and 
always pantheistic in proportion to their clearness. 
Nor have Mrs. Eddy's frequent revisions added to 
the literary attractiveness of her great work. They 
have only served to illustrate the childish ignorance, 
the feeble reason, and the total lack of literary skill 
and acumen, which distinguish her above all the pop- 
ular authors of the day. 

This volume was undertaken with a sincere con- 
viction that such an exhibition of the anti-Christian 
spirit and unscriptural doctrines of Christian Science 
was needed just at this time, and is now sent forth 
with an earnest prayer that God may use it for the 
furtherance of his gospel. 
The Manse, Graham, N. C. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Introductory — Discussion Necessary, ... 13 

PART I. 
General View. 

I. A New Gospel and a Growing Church. . 31 

II. A Bad Beginning, 42 

III. A Miraculous Book, 48 

IV. A New Mariolatry, 59 

V. Obstacles Removed — The Bible Set Aside 

and Orthodoxy Repudiated, . . 73 



PART II. 

Christian Science as a System of Mental 
Healing. 

VI. A Foolish Philosophy and its Absurd Con- 
sequences, 85 

VII. Christian Science and Faith Healing, . 102 

VIII. Christian Science vs. Mental Healing by 

the Medical Faculty, . . . . 114 

IX. Christian Science and Hypnotism, . . 126 



T2 Contents. 

Page. 
X. The Miracles of Christian Science, . . 139 

XL Christian Science Practice, 153 

XII. Christian Science Failures, ... 163 

XIII. The Influence of the Body on the Mind, . 169 



PART III. 
The Doctrinal Contents of Christian 
Science. 
XIV. An Old Theology in New Shape, . . 1S1 

XV. The Gospel of No Gospel, .... 212 

XVI. Christian Science, Theosophy and Gnosti- 
cism, 245 

XVII. Christian Science Worship and Sacraments, 267 

XVIII. Mrs. Eddy as an Expositor, . . . 2S6 

XIX. Summary and Conclusion, .... 303 



Christian Science. 



INTRODUCTORY.— DISCUSSION NECESSARY. 

That a pseudo-science and a false Christianity, 
such as those combined in the system exposed in this 
volume, should gain large credence among intelligent 
people in this enlightened age, may seem to many a 
thing incredible. But we cannot forget that ours has 
been an age of successful imposture, and of contag- 
ious delusions. The Millerite craze carried away fifty 
thousand in its day, and even when the predictions of 
Miller as to the advent of Christ in 1843 were disap- 
pointed — when thousands who had assembled on the 
hill-tops to meet their Lord as he came, found them- 
selves compelled to doff their ascension robes and re- 
turn to their homes sadder and wiser men — not even 
then did the movement cease; it survives to-day in 
the Seventh Day Adventist Church — a vigorous, ag- 
gressive and growing body. That Joseph Smith 
plagiarized the Book of Mormon from the unpub- 
lished manuscript of Rev. Solomon Spaulding, is well 
known to every well-informed person outside the 
ranks of Mormonism ; and yet that apostate church, 
thriving on immorality and presenting a bastard 
Christianity — a church heathenish both in its doc- 
trines and in its practices — now numbers three hun- 
dred thousand adherents. It controls the political 
destinies of three States, is planting its colonies, both 



14 Christian Science. 

for political and religious ends, wherever the craft of 
its leaders sees a favorable opening, and is pushing 
its proselyting missions to the remotest bounds of 
Christendom. "It is growing in the full light of our 
civilization, thrusting itself into positions of promi- 
nence, claiming recognition in our halls of national 
legislation, and staking its future, with bold confi- 
dence and with good reason, on the limitless credulity 
of nineteenth century humanity/' x In a later decade 
the Fox sisters, having discovered that by means of 
a simple trick they could produce certain rappings, 
which were accounted mysterious by their mother and 
neighbors, were encouraged to elaborate a system of 
deception from which sprung at last the whole fabric 
of Spiritualism. In 1888 one of the sisters appeared 
before a New York audience, confessed the imposture, 
and gave to all who were present a lucid and per- 
fectly satisfactory explanation of the method by which 
these "spirit-rappings" were produced; but the ex- 
posure came too late. Those who had been duped 
refused to be undeceived, and we are now told that 
there are a million and a half of Spiritualists in the 
United States. The still more recent impostures 
practiced by Madame Blavatsky are notorious; her 
own confessions are in evidence ; and yet the societv 
of which she became the founder, and which began 
with only fifteen members, now has its hundreds' of 
branches scattered through Christian and through 
heathen lands, and counts its members by thousands 
Far beyond the circle of its immediate influence it is 
now seeking, through the writings of such gifted vis- 
ionaries as Marie Corelli and others, to color the liter- 
ature and shape the thought of this generation. 

1 Rev. R. C. Reed, D. D., in Presbyterian Quarterly. 



Christian Science. 15 

But more shameless than any of these impositions is 
that practiced by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, who claims 
that in 1866 she receded a final revelation from God, 
to which, after long delay and deep thought — feeling, 
we presume, that she had both parental and Adamic 
privileges in being permitted to name the thing — she 
gave the title of " Christian Science." This new 
"Science" has in it elements of danger even more pro- 
nounced than any of the other impostures mentioned. 

It was my intention, when I began to write the 
papers contained in this volume, to prepare one on 
"Christian Science" in its relation to the laws of our 
land, and its status as determined by our courts. 
Along with Mormonism and certain faith-healing 
movements, it enjoys the coveted distinction of being 
liable to be arraigned at any time before our courts 
in the persons of its followers for violation of the laws 
of our land. Every State has its health laws, and no 
"Christian Scientist," unless for reasons of temporary 
expediency, counts himself under obligation to ob- 
serve these laws of the Commonwealth in which he 
lives. The chief purpose of the organization is to 
heal the sick ; and when Judge Pennypacker, of Phila- 
delphia, refused to grant a charter to a "Christian 
Scientist" Church, that it might be able to hold its 
property, he based his decision upon the act of the 
Pennsylvania Legislature prescribing the qualifica- 
tions of medical practitioners, saying that the grant- 
ing of a charter would be an infringement of the pro- 
visions of that act. The Supreme Court of Rhode 
Island, following decisions rendered by other courts, 
decided that "Christian Scientists" were not medical 
practitioners in the legal sense of the word, and that 
persons who neglect to send for physicians are liable, 



16 Christian Science. 

in case of the patient's death, to the penalty pre- 
scribed by the law for neglect, no matter how many 
"Christian Scientists" have been summoned. The 
issue is thus being squarely drawn. Cases like that of 
Mrs. Baird, a "Science" healer arrested in Kansas 
City for failure to report a case of malignant diph- 
theria which she had treated, are multiplying in every 
direction. Referring to a "Christian Science" family 
which refused to comply with the city ordinance re- 
quiring houses to be placarded in which there are 
malignant and contagious diseases, the Kansas City 
Star of January 5, 1897, observed : 

The issue to be decided is whether the ordinances of the 
city are to prevail in such cases or the peculiar notions of the 
people who regard the ordinances as an infringement upon 
their religious liberty. While the institutions of this Repub- 
lic vouchsafe, in general terms, the privilege to all of wor- 
shipping God according to the dictates of their own con- 
sciences, there are religions which would not be tolerated in 
this country. The pagan, who believes with his whole soul 
in the righteousness and efficacy of human sacrifices, would 
not be permitted to pursue his barbarous and bloody rites 
under the American scheme, and the government has de- 
clared that polygamy shall not be practiced and perpetuated, 
even though the followers of Brigham Young may gauge 
their love for God by the number of their wives. 

No religious, idea or belief can or will be countenanced in 
this country which conflicts with the authority of the State 
or sets out to defy its laws. Our system of government, in 
all of its details, allows the largest measure of liberty to the 
citizen which is consistent with the safety of his neighbor, 
but beyond that it cannot go. While the right of Christian 
Scientists to withhold medical treatment from members of 
their own faith may be open to debate, there can be no reason- 
able difference of opinion as to their responsibility to those 
regulations which provide in wisdom for the preservation 
of the public health and the prevention of pestilence. 



Christian Science. 17 

Stephens, in his Digest of the Criminal Law, de- 
clares that "a person is deemed to have committed 
homicide, although his act is not the sole cause of 
death, ... if by any act he hastens the death of a 
person suffering from any disease or injury which, 
apart from such act, would have caused death." It 
was, doubtless, under this law that the coroner's jury 
in London held Mrs. Athalie Mills and Miss Kate 
Lyons, two "Scientist" healers, for manslaughter, 
because of the death, under their treatment, of Harold 
Frederick, the well-known novelist and newspaper 
correspondent. According to the testimony, Mr. 
Frederick died from a malady which would not have 
resulted seriously if he had been given proper medi- 
cal attention. Referring to this case, the editor of 
Lazv Notes remarks : 

Christian Scientists, if their methods are interfered with in 
this country, will doubtless urge that they are not amenable 
for their acts, because they are merely engaged in a proper 
exercise of their religious liberty; but we advise them not 
to lay this flattering unction to their souls. The Supreme 
Court of the United States has passed upon the identical 
question in determining the alleged rights of Mormons to 
practice polygamy in accordance with the tenets of their re- 
ligion. . . Construing the first amendment to the Consti- 
tution, the Supreme Court has declared that it was intended 
to allow every one to . . . exhibit his sentiments in such 
forms of worship as he may think proper, "not injurious to 
others." But the court has emphatically declared : "With 
man's relations to his Maker, and the obligations he may 
think they impose, and the manner in which an expression 
shall be made by him of his belief on these subjects, no inter- 
ference can be permitted, provided, always, the laws of 
society, designed to secure its peace and prosperity, and the 
morals of its people, are not interfered with. However free 
the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to 



i8 Christian Science. 

the criminal laws of the country passed with reference to 
actions regarded by general consent as properly the subjects 
of punitive legislation." In view of these expressions we 
fail to see how Christian Scientists can hope for any im- 
munity from punishment because of the fact that their so- 
called scientific operations are sanctioned by and constitute 
a part of their religion. 

These opinions are, I conceive, unquestionably cor- 
rect. But there is need of active and determined 
effort everywhere on the part of those who are 
charged with the preservation of the public health to 
see that the law is executed. When Mrs. Baird was 
arrested it was stated in the press dispatches that fif- 
teen hundred Christian Scientists in Kansas City 
would sustain her. When grown strong, this body 
of deluded people may plunge whole communities 
into plagues of cholera, of yellow fever, of diphtheria, 
small-pox, or any other malignant contagion. 
^ But this is the least of the evils in the practice of 
Christian Science. It has in it untold possibilities of 
mischief, morally, socially, and religiously. Morallv, 
it cannot hope to restrain men from sin by telling 
them they are gods. Socially, it must inevitably pro- 
duce domestic alienation, divorce and immorality, 
wherever the contagion of its creed becomes epidemic! 
Religiously, it is animated by the bitterest hatred 
toward the whole system of revealed truth, and the 
whole fabric of Evangelical Christianity. 

And yet its first introduction into any community 
is as the appearance of an angel of light. It comes as 
a new advent of Christ, the "Sun of Righteousness 
with healing in his wings." It claims to be primitive 
Christianity in all and more than its original purity 
and power,— the true doctrine, purified by revelations 



Christian Science. 19 

fresh from heaven. It is full of love. It opposes no 
church, suggests no separation from orthodox bodies. 
It appeals blandly to the Scriptures to substantiate 
both its doctrines and its claims. But it bears in its 
right hand the pruning shears of a Biblical criticism 
which surpasses the pen-knife methods of all other 
destructive critics in its ability to reduce the Holy 
Book to a contemptible fragment of doubtful mean- 
ing, while in its left hand it bears the terminology, 
the cultus and the doctrines of an anti-Christian creed, 
which strikes viciously at every distinctive Christian 
doctrine, and makes of the suffering Divine Christ 
the amiable, but mortal, victim of hypnotic illu- 
sions. 

This new enemy of the Church of Christ must be 
met and conquered. This is no time for prophesying 
smooth things, and for speaking pleasantly of "our 
Scientist friends," as if we considered them all fellow- 
Christians, entitled to our confidence, our goodwill, 
and our Godspeed. Many of them are not Christians ; 
and we should, if possible, open their eyes to the 
dreadful delusion into which they have fallen, and 
show them the heathenish origin and the anti-Chris- 
tian tendency of the doctrines which they have em- 
braced. Away with such sentimental charity as that 
of the New England pastor who lectured to his con- 
gregation on the "Beauties of Christian Science !" 
As well might he have praised the beauties of Bud- 
dhism. There is in this false Christ, who came in 
1866, not in the clouds, but out of the befogged brain 
of a half-crazy woman, no beauty that we should 
admire him; nor does any voice from heaven say, 
"Hear ye him." Though men may say, "Lo ! here !" 
or "Lo! there!" we will not heed them. We still 



20 Christian Science. 

wait for the sign of our Lord's coming, and we will 
not be disappointed. 

Says the Rev. P. P. Flournoy, D. D., the accom- 
plished author of The Search-Light of St. Hippoly- 
tiiS; in a letter to the writer, "What I have heard . . . 
has convinced me that this heresy is a menace, especi- 
ally to bright and earnest Christian women, such as 
scarcely any other has ever been. . . I think that 
you could perform a great service for Christ our Lord 
and for some of the choicest of his flock by publish- 
ing your proposed book." This was encouraging, 
but it was not echoed on every hand. Many will agree 
with the venerable ex-professor of one of our Semi- 
naries, who wrote to the son of his old friend, "Chris- 
tian Science is not founded on reason, and cannot be 
met by reason/' With all deference to my revered 
and learned friend, I must beg to dissent from his 
second proposition, though fully agreeing with his 
first. It is not founded on reason, and therefore it 
can be met by reason. If it were founded on reason, 
it would be folly to assail it. But inasmuch as it is 
founded on fallacious reasoning rather than on true 
reason, this fact encourages me to attempt its refuta- 
tion. I have confidence in the reason of the average 
man or woman. I do not believe it will ever be use- 
less to show the fallacies of false systems. The light 
is its own evidence, even though it shine in the dark- 
ness and the darkness comprehend it not. Some will 
come to the light, that their "deeds may be manifest 
that they are wrought in God." Reason can confound 
unreason. Facts which do prove one doctrine will be 
stronger to convince rational minds than facts which 
are only supposed to prove another, and which are 
shown to be inconclusive. Since, then, a new assault 



Christian Science. 21 

is now being made upon the "faith once delivered to 
the saints/'' and we are bidden to "contend earnestly" 
for our precious heritage, we should be at this time, 
as always, ready to give a reason for the hope that is 
in us. Falsely accused of mutilating the gospel, and 
charged with hypocrisy, we may at least show our 
good conscience by exhibiting the grounds upon 
which we reject and contemn this alleged revelation 
recommended to us by one whose claim to plenary 
inspiration is refuted by the ever-changing character 
of her oracles, which shift as we look upon them, like 
the phantasmagoria of dreams. 

There is, in our time, especially in Christian 
churches, an intense opposition to controversy ; and I 
have been led to suspect that it is rather an opposition 
to polemics in defense of the faith than to those which 
assail the most venerable articles of our religion. It 
is not infrequently said that controversy is always 
hurtful. Those who take this ground forget the 
plainest lessons taught by the history of the church. 
Christianity was nurtured, not only by the fires of 
persecution, but by the heat of controversy. All that 
its first believers desired was a hearing, and they 
"declared the word with all boldness," alike in the 
audience of the people, and before the judgment seats 
of kings. Peter's sermon at Pentecost was controver- 
sial, and while it won a multitude of converts to the 
faith, it also threw down the gauntlet to priest and 
Pharisee, and helped him to a prison. A little later 
we see this bold defender of the faith facing the 
Sanhedrim, and taking advantage of a prisoner's op- 
portunity of defense in order to urge the claims of 
Christ upon rulers and elders. The deacon Stephen 
declared the gospel to a howling mob, though he died 



22 Christian Science. 

a martyr for his pains. Paul, we read, "disputed in 
the synagogue'' at Athens with the Jews and devout 
persons, and when challenged by Epicureans and 
Stoics was ready to stand on Mars' Hill and defend 
the blessed gospel of the resurrection. We are told 
of at least one philosopher who was converted by that 
sermon, who afterwards, if Eusebius is correct, be- 
came pastor of the Athenian church. Again, at 
Ephesus, Paul is found "disputing daily in the school 
of one Tyrannus." Thus did this great apostle every- 
where. Whether opposed by priest or philosopher, 
by Jew or Greek, whether arraigned before the Jeru- 
salem Sanhedrim or Roman governors, he embraced 
every opportunity to defend the truth, and to urge 
.the claims of the gospel of redemption. He was but 
one of many ; and while his epistles have been said to 
bear, more than any other Scriptures, the marks of the 
many controversies in which their author was en- 
gaged, the epistles of Peter, of John, of James and of 
Jude, all show the same peculiarity. John is said to 
have written his story, the most precious of the gospel 
narratives, for the purpose 'of refuting the heresy of 
Cerinthus. His first epistle reveals the same object, 
and he rebukes another Gnostic sect in the second 
chapter of the Apocalypse. True gospel preaching, if 
I catch the meaning of these facts, ought to take" ac- 
count of every form of error as it rises, and show its 
opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus only 
can we keep that which has been* committed to us, 
and prevent the "oppositions" of false systems from 
working serious injury to the church. When it comes 
to pass that the ministry cannot defend the truth and 
attack error in its strongholds without injuring the 
church, it will be high time for the ministry to have 



Christian Science. 23 

a new gospel to preach, or else for the church to have 
new men to preach the old gospel. 

Not only did primitive Christianity gain its tri- 
umphs largely through controversy, but in every age 
evangelical truth has been the gainer by its fearless 
attacks upon error. If the life of Protestantism in 
Germany was saved by the swords of the Protestant 
princes during the thirty years' war, that life was 
born of gospel seed sown in the controversial sermons 
and anti-papal tracts of Luther and his coadjutors. 
The age of the Reformation w r as preeminently an 
age of polemic pamphlets and of public discussion. 
The confessions of the Reformed churches were 
forged in the fires of heated controversy. The pro- 
ceedings of the Westminster Assembly may be de- 
scribed as a battle of giants day after day and month 
after month. Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Beza, Tyn- 
dale and Knox spent their lives in controversy. 

Truth wins its victories in the light of day, w r hile 
error runs its errands in the dark. False systems 
thrive on the drowsy indifference, the somnolent 
peace, and the time-serving caution of those whom 
God has appointed guardians of His truth. Had 
those who knew the facts been able to meet Mormon- 
ism face to face in its early days, and show the evi- 
dence of Smith's fraud, that foul heresy would have 
been crippled, if not destroyed, for all time. While 
persecution popularizes, and the blood of martyrs 
may become the seed even of an apostate church, the 
public refutation of error drives it into hiding. Ro- 
manism has long ago learned to avoid discussion with 
Protestants, and with caution born of sad experience 
now adopts the easier arts of smiling peace and pri- 
vate deception. Mormon missionaries and Advent- 



24 Christian Science. 

ists forsake a neighborhood in which their tenets 
have been exposed and refuted. Spiritualism shuns 
the light of day, and Theosophy must needs depend 
upon the tricks of oriental jugglers and letters from 
Thibet. And what has been found to be true of other 
classes of errorists will be true also of Christian 
Scientists. They will not come out boldly into the 
light. They will not risk all upon the judgment of an 
enlightened people. Their protests against the re- 
plies which they themselves have challenged, their 
carefully indefinite references to certain cases of 
healing, their reiterated pleas for Christian charity, 
their loud professions of love for humanity, and their 
cant about religious freedom, all show their unwill- 
ingness to meet the issue squarely and fairly. Since 
the writer began to publish the results of his investi- 
gations into the origin and character of Mrs. Eddy's 
new gospel, he has received letters protesting against 
his "attacks" upon Christian Science, and pleading 
for the recognition of that church as a Christian or- 
ganization, working for the good of humanity. He 
has also received sundry papers from anonymous 
sources, sent by pious Scientists for his enlight- 
enment, but, greatly to his satisfaction, furnishing 
him with valuable weapons for his arsenal. The 
galled jade winces, and the scourge of small cords 
which we are able to draw from our unmutilated 
Bibles is found to have a longer reach and a sharper 
lash than the scourge of Science with which Mrs. 
Eddy proposes to whip us all out of the Temple of 
God. 

I have been led to surmise that in this last revival 
of ancient heresy the Church of Christ may be suffer- 
ing chastisement for its efforts to compromise with 



Christian Science. 25 

the enemies of the truth. Christian Science had its 
birth not far from a city in which some twenty years 
ago a popular preacher — since sunk to the more fitting 
station of a horse jockey — declared that he could not 
preach the doctrine of eternal punishment, because 
the people had laughed it to scorn. It is unquestion- 
ably true that for more than forty years the effort to 
convert souls and train Christians by the preaching 
of the gospel has been largely abandoned in favor of 
humanitarian schemes and sociological discussions. 
Unitarianism and Universalism have grown strong 
side by side, and in brotherly fellowship, with an 
evangelical pulpit which for five decades has de- 
voted much of its time to political propagandism. It 
is significant of the trend of ministerial opinion that 
the Homiletic Review for this month of June, 1899, 
recommends that ministers adopt the advice of Pro- 
fessor Commons, and devote the Sunday evening ser- 
vice to "a course of sermons on Sociology." In the 
judgment of such writers, "Christ and Him crucified" 
is not a sufficient theme for the evening service, and 
something better must be found. 

It is believed that the discussion of this new form 
of error in our pulpits and in the columns of the re- 
ligious and secular press will give a grand opportu- 
nity to present, to a thoroughly interested reading 
public, a restatement of the fundamental doctrines of 
the gospel, and an exhibition of the character and 
proofs of Scriptural inspiration. The vantage ground 
of every form of error is discovered in the crude and 
childish notions of evangelical teaching which are 
often cherished even by cultivated men and women. 
The old catechetical system has passed away, and a 
generation has grown up which knows not the doc- 



26 Christian Science. 

trines of grace as they were known to our fathers. 
The exact definitions of the Westminster Confession 
are to-day in an unknown tongue to many who have 
grown up in our Presbyterian congregations, and our 
home mission work is bringing in multitudes who 
need to be instructed in the "form of sound words." 

The labor expended in honest and prayerful de- 
fense of the truth will not be spent in vain. If the 
light of Scripture and of reason were everywhere 
turned upon the dangerous errors of this most un- 
christian creed of the century, such an exposure 
would be sufficient to turn back into the way of truth 
many who have been led astray by the vaunted mir- 
acles and specious claims of Christian Science healers ; 
while others, being forewarned, would be forearmed 
against assaults upon their faith. 

And, far beyond the recovery of those who are be- 
ing led into the barren mountains of Pantheistic spec- 
ulation, and into the hopeless quagmires of the mental 
healing lunacy, is the good that may be accomplished 
in the revival of interest in the pure gospel, and the 
awakening of the church to a sounder and stronger 
life. We have passed through whole decades of re- 
vivalism, in which emotional stories and shallow ex- 
hortations have taken the place of old-fashioned gos- 
pel preaching, with its pictures of the majesty of 
Sinai and the heinousness of sin, its terrible appeal to 
the conscience and the reason, and its tender plead- 
ings with the unrenewed heart. "Men now repent " 
said an old Methodist preacher in the writer's hear- 
ing many years ago, "who have not felt that they are 
sinners ; they are converted without being born again 
and they exercise faith without really trusting in 
Christ. There is truth in this lamentable confes- 



Christian Science. 27 

sion. A higher type of religious experience is needed, 
which will cut off the demand for such efforts as the 
Keswick movement. Higher life comes from assimi- 
lation of the truth. And truth is never so command- 
ing as when shown in contrast with error. The Bible 
is never so majestic as when it is brought to the stand 
to testify in its own behalf against the hoary false- 
hoods of ages. Nor can we, who believe in our Lord's 
ever-presence with His church, doubt that He will 
shed forth the Spirit of His grace, and add His om- 
nipotent testimony to the preaching of the Word, and 
His infallible demonstrations to the witness of His 
servants. 



PART I. 



GENERAL VIEW. 



A NEW GOSPEL AND A GROWING CHURCH 

"A higher and more practical Christianity stands 
at the door of this age knocking for admission." 
"Above Arcturus and his sons, broader than the uni- 
verse and higher than the heavens of your astronomy, 
stands the Science of mental healing." Mortals 
cabined, cribbed, and confined by all orthodox doc- 
trines as to man's nature and destiny, are like un- 
hatched chickens, and are now exhorted to "peck 
their shells open with Christian Science and look up- 
ward." In these and like swelling words Mrs. Mary 
Baker Glover Eddy challenges the attention of the 
Christian world to the "sacred discovery" which she 
claims to have made. 1 

Nor is her challenge unheeded. Already the sect 
of which she has become the head and oracle has a 
very considerable following. The "Mother Church" 
in Boston, of which she was the founder and first 
pastor, otherwise called the "First Church of Christ, 
Scientist," is one of the most flourishing churches in 
the city. It now numbers more than thirteen hun- 
dred resident members, with a total membership, in- 
cluding non-residents, of some 12,000. According to 
The Independent, at the beginning of the year 1898 
the whole enrolled membership of the sect was "con- 
servatively placed at from 40,000 to 50,000," while the 



1 Science and Health, pp. 120 and 544, and Christian Science 
Series, No. 5, p. 10. 



32 Christian Science. 

actual number of avowed adherents and church at- 
tendants was much larger, being not less than 250,000 
in the United States and Canada. A recent writer 
estimates the number of adherents in the world at 
300,000! The official report of the body in 1896 
claimed that near 20,000 converts had been made in 
the United States alone within the previous five years. 
Its active ministry, classed as "official church readers, 
missionaries and healers/' all of whom devote their 
whole time to the healing and reformatory work of 
the new church, was set down at the close of 1896 at 
more than 6,000. A year later it was reported at 
over 7,500. This relatively enormous number of 
propagandists is being, we are told, "rapidly increased 
by the acquisition of many trained nurses, surgeons 
and physicians from both schools of medicine, as well 
as many consecrated men and women from the ranks 
of mercantile, social, religious and literary life." It 
was claimed that the attendance upon Christian 
Science services doubled during the year 1897, and 
large growth was reported likewise for the year 1898. 
Its "chartered churches" and "Christian Science In- 
stitutes" are multiplying rapidly, and there is hardly 
a city of importance in our land where this new sect 
has not a band of zealous workers. It is a well- 
organized body, with national, State and local soci- 
eties, all compacted by the cementing power of a spu- 
rious sense of Christian brotherhood, and propelled 
by the energy of a novel and intense enthusiasm. It 
has already an influential periodical press, edited by 
men and women of some scholarship, of ability by no 
means contemptible, and of unflagging industry and 
zeal. It is prolific of books, booklets and tracts, a 
tew of them written in pleasing literary style, and all 



Christian Science. 33 

urging the claims of the new doctrines with some 
show of learning, much apparent sincerity, and with 
vast plausibility of statement ; while under the auspices 
of its "Board of Lectureship" a number of talented 
men and women are engaged in canvassing our whole 
country, proclaiming the new gospel everywhere. 

"Christian Science," so-called, professes exceed- 
ing reverence for the name of Jesus, and proclaims 
as its mission the restoration of primitive Christianity 
through the "healing of the sick and the reformation 
of the depraved." Its one method, by which all its 
marvels, both of spiritual and physical healing, are 
wrought, is declared to be the same by which our 
Lord wrought all his "so-called miracles." 

A more complete misnomer than the name chosen 
for this new religion could hardly be conceived. 
It is, in fact, a new heathenism, and has in it no 
single shred of science, and hardly so much as a scrap 
of genuine Christianity. As our examination will 
show, it violates every principle of scientific investiga- 
tion and of logical thought, and contradicts the plain 
testimony of the Scriptures touching every cardinal 
doctrine of the Christian system. It is, however, one 
of the most curious of the many peculiar religious 
phenomena of this progressive and scientific age. It 
is well adapted to the wants of that large class of in- 
dependent and extraordinary people whose highest 
ambition is to keep "abreast of the times." Just now 
the whole world is worshipping Science. The leader 
of this new movement, wiser in her generation than 
the children of light, has adopted in her system a 
terminology than which nothing better for her pur- 
pose could have been devised. It splits the ears of 
groundlings with its show of learning and its pre- 



34 Christian Science. 

tense of science, while its novelty rivets the attention 
and compels the faith of that Athenian multitude 
which is ever desirous to "hear or to tell something 
new." Indeed, birdlime is scarcely so good a device 
for trapping the unwary bird as is this new scheme 
for capturing those who know little of religion and 
less of science. 

It makes its bland appeal to the "scientific" mind. 
Everything in it is "scientific," seeming to the un- 
learned and the credulous to savor of patient study, 
of unwearied research, and of exact methods. It 
proffers to those who have been vexed with the 
long talked-of contradictions between Genesis and 
Geology, the latest and the most "scientific" expo- 
sitions of Bible history and doctrine. Its cures and 
conversions, its spiritual victories over sin and tempta- 
tion, and its manifold wonders which challenge com- 
parison with the miracles of Christ and his apostles, 
are "demonstrations." Its new Bible, for which 
plenary inspiration and Divine authority are claimed, 
is "our text-book." Its basic ideas are presented as 
"Rudiments and Rules." Its theology is "Metaphys- 
ics," and the schools of its prophets are "Metaphysi- 
cal" or "Christian Science" Academies, Institutes, 
Colleges, etc. Its theological graduates are gradu- 
ated, not in theology — possibly because there is a 
prejudice against theology in this day— but in 
"Science," and receive the academic degree's of "Doc- 
tor of Christian Science," "Bachelor of Divine 
Science," or the more modest "Christian Scientist," 
these degrees answering to those of Master and 
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Philosophy in our 
colleges. Thus are all its authoritative expounders 
vested with badges certifying their proficiency in all 



Christian Science. 35 

the supposedly abstruse branches of this new "scien- 
tific" education. 

Its new Divine revelation, and its perennial foun- 
tain of living truth and of saving grace, is a book 
with a prodigiously seductive title. Who could con- 
ceive of anything more taking in this practical age, 
in which health-seeking is the principal occupation of 
many women and not a few men, than "Science and 
Health"? "Christian Science" professes to be prac- 
tical, and proposes to meet the wants of all who de- 
sire a practical religion. It comes laden with present 
blessings for all men and women who are weary and 
heavy laden with mortal infirmities and desire to 
enter into "freedom through the truth." Where, 
indeed, is the "mortal mind" that would not like to 
be informed of the latest revelations of science, and 
to learn the secret of unfailing health? Here at 
last is found the "El Dorado, the Golden Land of 
Promise, upon whose mountain peaks" of inspired 
doctrine mortals have "only to gaze in order to be 
healed." 

This, too, is an age of doubt. This new creed offers 
a satisfactory solution of all the vexing questions 
started by the materialistic science of the age, and 
professes to vindicate grandly the spiritual origin and 
nature of man. 

In short, Christian Science is the very latest phase 
of "advanced thought," the newest fad in rationalistic 
religion. It comes heralded as an authoritative and 
final settlement of all questions related to life, duty 
and destiny, introducing itself as Christian, and, even 
more than that — lest we should fail to give it all the 

1 Mrs. Woodbury, War in Heaven, p. 14. 



36 Christian Science. 

honor which it demands — as DIVINE Science. It 
is a brand-new, up-to-date system of religion, de- 
signed to meet the wants of all that large class of as- 
piring souls who have grown weary of "traditional 
theology," and are just now waiting for some pilot 
prepared to help them launch out into the deep, and 
to steer them in their voyage of intellectual and 
spiritual discovery. 

In one important particular, however, the apostles 
of this new healing and reformatory gospel differ 
from the apostles of Christ, and from the Master him- 
self. It is not recorded that Jesus or any of His apos- 
tles charged any specific fee for instruction in the 
facts and doctrines of religion, or for miracles of 
healing. But in this new scientific religion one is, 
while exempt from any obligation to pray, compelled 
nevertheless to pay as he goes. 

The first duty of the Christian Scientist, or even of 
one desirous of studying the new religion, is to pro- 
vide himself with a copy of Science and Health. 
Here is the law from the book itself : 

A Christian Scientist requires my work on Science and 
Health for his text-book, and so do all his students and pa- 
tients. Why? First, Because it is the voice of Truth to this 
age, and contains the whole of Christian Science, or the 
science of healing through Mind. Second, Because it was 
the first published book containing a statement of Christian 
Science, gave the first rules for demonstrating this science, 
and registered this revealed Truth uncontaminated by human 
hypotheses. Other works, which have borrowed from this 
book without giving it credit, have adulterated the science. 
Third, Because this work has done more for teacher and 
student, for healer and patient, than has been accomplished 
by other works. — Science and Health, p. 453. 



Christian Science. 37 

This is authoritative, and accounts for the fact that 
such a book as Science and Health has been able to 
reach its hundred and fifty-fourth edition. It is said 
that a new edition is published every six months, 
and that every loyal "Scientist" considers himself 
in duty bound to purchase a copy of the latest edi- 
tion at the earliest possible moment after it is pub- 
lished. As the book, even in its cheapest form, costs 
$3.18, postpaid, and is very inexpensively made, it 
is obvious that Mrs. Eddy's royalties must be consid- 
erable. Her other publications — all of which are 
much used as means of introducing the new creed, as 
well as of healing the sick — are published at higher 
prices relatively. The literary ventures of Mrs. Eddy 
cannot be said to have been failures from a financial 
standpoint. 

Mental healers, not being required to devote any 
time to the study of such "materialistic" branches as 
Chemistry, Anatomy, Physiology, and Materia Med- 
ica, can qualify themselves for the practice of their 
profession in a very short time. Fees for tuition, 
however, are not proportionally less than those 
charged by medical colleges, but, on the contrary, are 
very much higher. While Mrs. Eddy was conducting 
the "Massachusetts Metaphysical College,'' of which 
she was the only teacher, save as her labors for a time 
were shared to a limited extent by her husband, since 
deceased, her charge for a primary course of twelve 
lessons, continuing through three weeks, was $300; 
for the normal course, $200 ; and for special instruc- 
tion in Metaphysical Obstetrics, $100; while attend- 
ance upon her lectures on Theology and the Bible 
necessitated the expenditure of $200 additional. Hus- 
bands and wives entering the primary class at the 



38 Christian Science. 

same time were required to pay but half tuition. If 
they entered at different times, or desired to pursue 
any of the advanced courses of study, they were re- 
quired to pay full fees. The highest discount to an 
indigent student was $100, and this applied only to 
the first course. It seems to have been presumed that 
as soon as students completed the primary course they 
could begin the practice of their profession, and that 
their success would soon enable them to earn money 
enough to finish their course and take their degrees. 
They were instructed to charge their patients, Mrs. 
Eddy holding, it would seem, that people would value 
their health and their healers more if required to pay 
for "treatment." Thus it required at least $800 to 
enable one to master the abstruse branches of this 
"scientific" education, exclusive of the trifling matter 
of board. 

Mrs. Eddy conducted her college for eight years, 
closing it at last, when it was "in the height of its 
prosperity," and one hundred and sixty applications 
for admission lay on her desk, in order to devote her- 
self to the task of revising her book. 1 During the first 
years of her career as a teacher she also did much 



'A writer in the Arena of May, 1899, intimates that pos- 
sibly Mrs. Eddy may have been influenced by other consid- 
erations in closing her college. "In 1889 Mrs. Eddy osten- 
sibly gave up her college and retired to Concord, N. H., at 
the very period when a Massachusetts district attorney was 
looking for evidence of that institution's illegally conferred 
degrees, of which there were thousands, punishable with a 
fine of five hundred dollars for each offense. Is this the 
reason that for ten years Mrs. Eddy has not visited Boston 
on a week day, when she would be subject to arrest?" This 
seems to be a very natural inquiry. 



Christian Science. 39 

lealing, if we may credit her statements ; and so, from 
;he several sources indicated, together with the free- 
will offerings of patients and students, and a thriving 
trade in her photographs and souvenir spoons, etc., 
she has managed to amass a respectable competency. 
She has built herself a fine residence in Concord, 
New Hampshire, and having retired from active 
work, save as the peculiar type of inspiration which 
possesses her requires frequent revisions of her 
infallible book, and her unique position as the oracle 
of a growing sect demands frequent communica- 
tions, is spending her declining years in comfort. 
She says much in her works about cross-bearing, 
crucifixion, and the like, as incidents in the exalted 
and unselfish life to which she invites her follow- 
ers; but it is not known that she has ever endured 
any very great persecutions. She has not, indeed, 
been warmly welcomed as an ally by the Christian 
churches and ministry ; but she has not been mobbed, 
nor even hooted by the street gamins at any time, so 
far as I can learn. It is quite probable that she will 
at last "die amidst her worshippers/' like the error 
she would fain revive. Her life seems a singular 
commentary upon the apostle's statement, "All that 
will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecu- 
tion." It is singular also that this lady of means and 
leisure, whose inspiration is asserted to surpass that of 
all the prophets who have preceded her, has retired 
from the practice of her sublime healing art. The fol- 
lowing note appears at the end of the preface to her 
great work: "The author takes no patients, and de- 
clines medical consultation." Formerly the notice 
was, "The authoress takes no patients, and has no 



40 Christian Science. 

time for medical consultation/' She has the time 
now, we may assume, but chooses to let men suffer 
and die without any longer sending forth the healing 
aroma of her thought, save as that is dispensed in her 
various works. There is considerable contrast be- 
tween this wealthy and much idolized widow and 
those great men of the past who, in poverty and in 
obscurity, became founders of great religious and 
philosophical systems, and, most of all, between her 
and One who "had not where to lay His head." 

Many Christian Science institutes have sprung up 
in various parts of our land, and their charges, while 
never as large as those of the Founder of their 
Science, are sufficient to astonish the professors of 
our medical colleges when the brevity of the course 
is considered. At one time there were certain teach- 
ers who offered to communicate all they knew, with 
the privilege of conversation once a month for a 
year, on payment of $100. Rivalries among the vari- 
ous Mental Healing schools have led to the practice of 
denying recognition to all who do not advertise in the 
Christian Science Journal. This plan has the double 
advantage of securing a considerable advertising 
patronage for the periodical, and at the same time 
warning the public against false teachers of the 
Divine Science. Many of those who have graduated 
under the instructions of Mrs. Eddy and her pupils 
have achieved notoriety as healers, and have been 
greatly prospered. The lucrative character of Chris- 
tian Science practice may have something to do with 
the amazing industry of those who are engaged in 
propagating the new creed. Their campaign is 
waged on principles somewhat different from those 



Christian Science. 41 

which were adopted by the first preachers of the 
cross; and the bait which the devil offered to Christ 
in his temptation is held steadily before the great 
army of Christian Scientists. They confidently ex- 
pect to gain "all the kingdoms of the world and the 
glory of them." 



II. 

A BAD BEGINNING. 

If it be true that "a bad beginning makes a good 
ending,''' and if it be also true that the blessedness 
of the ending is always proportional to the badness 
of the beginning, Christian Science is destined to 
shine like the sun in an eternal blaze of glory. Its 
antecedents are suspicious in the extreme. Its origin, 
according to the statement of its founder, was in 
humbuggery, patent and confessed. Mrs. Eddy is a 
native of Xew Hampshire, and alleges that for more 
than thirty years she was a member in good standing 
of the Congregational Church in the town of Tilton. 
She was a homoeopathic physician. Her "experiments 
in homoeopathy had made her skeptical as to material 
curative methods." Two of these experiments she 
relates with charming naivete. In one she "attenu- 
ated common table salt until there was not a single 
saline property left.'*' Putting a drop of that attenu- 
ation in a goblet of water, and administering a tea- 
spoonful dose of this medicated water every three 
hours, she succeeded in curing a patient who was 
sinking in the last stages of typhoid fever ! The other 
experiment was even more wonderful. The patient 
was in the last stages of dropsy; had been tapped; 
"looked like a barrel." Mrs. Eddy prescribed "the 
fourth attenuation of Argenitum Xitricum, with oc- 
casional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphur is." 
The patient improved perceptibly. Fearing an un- 
favorable reaction from the prolonged use of these 
very dangerous remedies, Mrs. Eddy desired to 



Christian Science. 43 

change her treatment, and so informed the patient. 
The latter, however, objecting, Mrs. Eddy, unwilling 
to risk reaction, continued her treatment by slyly ad- 
ministering the unmedicated* pellets, and thus ef- 
fected a cure! — Science and Health, pp. 46, 49. 
Others, whose minds reason normally, would have 
concluded from these experiments, not that all medi- 
cine was useless, but that cases which could be cured 
by homoeopathy could be cured as well without medi- 
cine ; but Mrs. Eddy was thus led to see in the "meta- 
physics" of "Christian Science" the "next stately step 
beyond homoeopathy/' — Ibid., p. 50. 1 

1 Apropos of the fact that Mrs. Eddy graduated into Chris- 
tian Science "discovery and revelation" from the ranks of 
homoeopathy, we are reminded of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
opinion of homoeopathy as given in his Medical Essays. It 
is, he says, "a pretended science, ... a mingled mass of 
perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, 
and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in prac- 
tice, if we may trust the authority of its founder, with heart- 
less and shameless imposition." Mrs. Eddy's account of her 
own homoeopathic practice bears out the doctor fully. It 
may be noted that in speaking of her success in healing with 
unmedicated pellets and with diluted salt water she men- 
tions it quite as a matter of course, and shows no sign of any 
moral compunction in view of her own humbuggery. On 
the contrary, she regards homoeopathy as "stately," and her 
own "sacred discovery" as another "stately step" beyond 
what she herself has shown to be palpable humbuggery. It 
is, indeed, a somewhat more "stately" imposition upon public 
credulity. 

Another remark of Dr. Holmes is pertinent : "The pseudo- 
sciences, phrenology and the rest, it seems to me, only appeal 
to weak minds and the weak points of strong ones. There is 
a pica, or false appetite, in many intelligences ; they take to 
odd fancies in place of wholesome truth, as girls gnaw at 
chalk and charcoal." — Medical Essays, p. 245. 



44 Christian Science. 

In her revolt against the use of drugs, our new 
reformer was further encouraged by the outspoken 
skepticism of Dr. Benjamin Rush and sundry other 
eminent medical men^s to the value of their own 
science. Among numerous startling opinions she 
quotes that of "Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon Extra- 
ordinary to the King/' to the effect that if there were 
not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man mid- 
wife, chemist, druggist, or drug, in the world, there 
would be less sickness and less mortality. She was 
then, according to her own testimony, a conscious 
quack, deeming all other practitioners equally dis- 
honest with herself, and fully convinced that all drugs 
were worthless. While in this state of mind she be- 
gan to muse on the healing practiced in the primitive 
church, together with the admitted fact that the 
mind has much to do with both the cause and cure of 
disease. At last, she avers, when desperately ill, and 
"standing within the shadow of the death-valley," 
she lighted upon her marvelous discovery, and re- 
ceived her call to become the prophetess of a new dis- 
pensation. 1 

^ Justice to the facts of the case, however, demands 
the statement that some four years prior to her al- 
leged "discovery" of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy 
was for many months under the treatment of one Dr. 
Phineas P. Quimby, whom she admits to have been 
"a distinguished mesmerist," with some "advanced 
views about mental healing." This fact has given 
rise, even in the ranks of so-called Christian Scient- 
ists, to much acrimonious discussion, many holding 
that she is indebted to Dr. Quimby for 'the chief 
points of her system, and that her claim to exclusive 



1 Science and Health, pp. 2, 3. 



Christian Science. 45 

originality, revelation, etc., is not altogether unques- 
tionable. Among the latest who have appeared in 
the lists challenging the proofs of Mrs. Eddy's origi- 
nality is Mrs. Josephine Curtis Woodbury, formerly 
one of her most devoted adherents, but now an inde- 
pendent teacher of Mental Healing. In a letter pub- 
lished in the Bangor (Me.) News of December 6, 
1898, Mrs. Woodbury says that the leading ideas of 
Science and Health are " borrowed from various 
writers, chiefly from the late Dr. Phineas P. Quimby, 
of Portland, Maine." 

"Dr. Quimby was an original thinker, and achieved marked 
success as a healer along mental lines years before Mrs. 
Eddy (then Mrs. Glover or Airs. Patterson), afflicted with a 
disease in the nature of palsy, 'turned in despair from materia 
medica' and sought the doctor's aid. 

"In the Christian Science Journal for June, 1887, Mrs. 
Eddy states, over her own signature, that she was under Dr. 
Quimby's treatment from 1862 till his death in 1865. Mrs. 
Eddy further states in the same journal that in 1865 she was 
so well under Dr. Quimby's treatment that she believed her- 
self healed. 'I wrote and talked,' so she affirms, 'as if his 
method must be genuine science, and was too proud to think 
it could be anything else.' 

"In writings only recently examined I find a series of ar- 
ticles dating from 1841 to 1865, written in some instances by 
Dr. Quimby himself, and in others by his patients and pu- 
pils, some of them being printed in the newspapers in various 
towns and cities of Maine. 

"The ideas thus promulgated were then credited to Dr. 
Quimby, even by Mrs. Eddy herself; but in 1875 we find 
them incorporated into Science and Health as part of a 'spe- 
cial revelation' to its author." * 

1 In the paper in the Arena for May, 1899, just now quoted, 
Mrs. Woodbury united with Horatio Dresser in presenting 



46 Christian Science. 

Mrs. Eddy's defense of herself against this charge 
of plagiarism is brilliant and conclusive. It is simply 
this: Dr. Quimby died in 1865, whereas her "first 
revelation" of Christian Science was in 1866! It is 
characteristic of the peculiar modes of reasoning 
which distinguish Mrs. Eddy from all who have 
written books or founded great religious systems, that 
in this instance she relies triumphantly upon the very 
fact which clear-headed people are compelled to con- 
sider most suspicious — that she did not receive this 
revelation until Dr. Quimby was under ground. 
Imagine Joseph Smith, Jr., defending himself against 
the charge that Rev. Solomon Spaulding wrote the 
Book of Mormon by saying he did not "discover" 
that book till long after Spaulding was dead ! 

Mrs. Eddy has not been allowed to play her role of 
prophetess and reformer without rivals. Several 



what all unprejudiced readers are compelled to regard con- 
clusive and overwhelming testimony to show that Mrs. Eddy 
derived the essential points of her theory, and even the term 
"Christian Science," from Dr. Quimby. Among other items 
contributed by Mrs. Woodbury is a poem by Mrs. Eddy, en- 
titled "Lines on the Death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, who healed 
with the Truth that Christ taught," etc.. which concludes as 
follows : 

"Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul. 
Growing in stature to the throne of God. 
Rest should reward him who hath made us whole, 
Seeking, though tremblers, where his footsteps trod." 

Mrs. Eddy has since intimated that if she wrote this poem 
it must have been under the malign influence of Dr. Quimby's 
departed spirit ! Her head, she says in the Christian Seience 
Journal of June, 1887, must have been "turned by animal 
magnetism and will-power." 



Christian Science. 47 

mutually antagonistic schools of mental healing have 
been developed, and the feelings engendered by these 
rivalries combine the intensity of the odium theologi- 
cum with that of the odium medicum. Forgetting, 
possibly, the old proverb that those who live in glass 
houses should not throw stones, Mrs. Eddy does not 
hesitate to hurl the accusation of plagiarism against 
all and singular of her rivals. "Some silly publica- 
tions/' she remarks, with her wonted modesty and 
gentleness, "whose only correct or salient points 
are borrowed, without credit, from Science and 
Health would set the world right on Metaphysical 
Healing, like children thrumming a piano and pre- 
tending to teach music or criticise Mozart." 

Christian Science began in pious fraud and shame- 
less pretense. Into what it grew, I propose to show 
in the following chapters. 



A MIRACULOUS BOOK. 

Mrs. Eddy's great work, Science and Health, de- 
serves to be counted among the curiosities of nine- 
teenth century literature. Giving the results of her 
ripest thought and experience, and containing, as she 
would have us believe, a revelation of truth, which is 
the "gospel to this age," 1 it is unique both in matter 
and style. 

In this volume Mrs. Eddy essays to discuss and 
decide all the great questions that concern the origin, 
duty, and fate of humanity. The sublime egoism of 
the whole performance is but faintly indicated by a 
quotation which one must needs observe on the fly- 
leaf as he opens the volume : 

I, I, I, I itself, I, 
The inside and outside, the what and the why, 
The when and the where, the low and the high, 

All I, I, I, I itself, I. 

Scarcely for a moment from the time when the 
author, 'leaning on the sustaining Infinite," emerges 
to the dear reader's view in her preface till he finishes 
the last page, in which, with wondrous humility for 
an "Immortal" so richly endowed and so marvelously 
favored, she concludes her "feeble revelation," is he 
permitted to lose sight of her very original and inter- 
esting personality. "Verily, I say unto you," is her 

1 Science and Health, Preface. 



Christian Science. 49 

only "oath for confirmation." She is her own highest 
authority, and declares that the revelation which she 
announces to the world was vouchsafed to none but 
herself. 

Science and Health is a book of endless repetitions. 
The author's perpetual iterations are bewildering 
and wearisome. With many an eccentric curve, 
and many a perilous leap, and many a startling flight 
through thinnest ether, she rides her winged Pegasus 
round the whole universe ; but after her first flight she 
returns from every new excursion only to tell us 
something she has already told. Never for a single 
instant does her reasoning proceed on a straight line. 
In fact, the straight line is a symbol, in her system, 
of the error she hates, "the finite, which has both be- 
ginning and end," "the belief in a self-existent and 
temporary material existence." Having such a pre- 
judice against straight lines, it is, perhaps, natural 
that she should indulge in circular demonstrations. 
Her method is the absence of all methods. Her 
definitions do not define. Her syllogism invariably 
expresses its conclusion in its premise. One may 
open the volume at random and read in either direc- 
tion without being able to discover any material dif- 
ference either in the style of the argument or the se- 
quence of the author's thoughts. 

Her use of common English words is often such as 
to puzzle the reader. Assuming as the basic principle 
of her thinking a theory which denies the evidence of 
our five senses and the testimony of our reason, and 
yet compelled to clothe her vague conceptions in the 
language of ordinary experience, she must of neces- 
sity use many words in an accommodated sense. But 
words refuse to be thus always emptied of their origi- 



5<3 Christian Science. 

nal contents and made the vehicles of foreign ideas, 
and the result is confusion than which imagination 
can conceive none worse confounded. But, never- 
theless, she seems blissfully unconscious of the havoc 
she makes of the proprieties of English speech. "No 
pent-up Utica contracts her powers.'' Spurning all 
conventional restraints, both in thought and expres- 
sion, — pouring "the new wine of the Spirit into the 
old bottles of the letter,'' 1 heedless of the bursting 
which must inevitably ensue, entailing the loss of both 
wine and bottles, — setting at defiance the laws of logic 
and the laws of language, — she essays to unfold a 
new system of medicine, a new philosophy, and a 
new theology. 

Nor can she be accused of yielding to any excessive 
timidity or modesty in her supreme effort. Engaged 
in a higher and holier cause, she emulates the cour- 
age of the old Abolitionists. With heroic sense of the 
danger she incurs, and of the tremendous difficulties 
she must overcome, she addresses herself to the "task 
of the sturdy pioneer," and proceeds laboriously to 
" hew the tall oak and cut the rough granite" ; and 
it may be safely affirmed that from the beginning f 
the world until now such hewing, sawing, twisting, 
dividing asunder, and refashioning of tilings in the 
world of thought has not been witnessed. Impelled 
to open her treasures, she exhibits to our wondering 
view a new pearl of great price, and having risen 
high above all capability of displeasure at our unbe- 
lief, she commits her discovery, with Miltonic assur- 
ance of its high destiny, to "honest seekers for Truth 
in this and every age." 2 



1 Science and Health, p. 8. * Ibid., Preface. 



Christian Science. 51 

Science and Health is a mixture of oracular dog- 
matism, of feeble and inconsequential argument, 
crude theory, hackneyed platitudes, adroit misrepre- 
sentations of orthodox teaching, fallacious reasoning, 
stupid and ignorant perversions of Scripture, bor- 
rowed heathenism, and withal of multitudinous ab- 
surdities. Its author's statements abound in self- 
contradictions. Facts which she denies in her 
theology she is compelled to admit in her ethics. 
Professing exceeding faith in the Scriptures as the 
"chart of life," she nevertheless seeks to substitute for 
them another chart, woven out of her own fancies, 
and marked with the eccentric lines of her own ill- 
regulated thought. Announcing her creed by a sig- 
nificant and absurd reference as the "leaven which 
A WOMAN took and hid in three measures of meal," 
she illustrates on every page the poet's remark about 
feminine thinking, — 

"A woman's reason is a woman's reason, — 
I think him so, because I think him so" — 

a remark abundantly justified by the reasoning of 
some women, and particularly by the reasoning of 
such philosophers and theologians as Mrs. Eddy and 
a few others. 

I have intimated that this new prophetess betrays 
gross ignorance. It would be tedious, even if it were 
necessary, to cull out of her pages the multiplied in- 
stances of incorrect grammar, of misused words, of 
faulty rhetoric, of stupid misconception, of irrelevant 
remark, and of unconscious blundering with which the 
book abounds. 1 Every page bears evidence that the 

1 Two amusing instances of the ignorance of "Mother 
Mary" are cited by Mrs. Woodbury in the Arena for May, 



52 Christian Science. 

writer is not only a woman of deficient education, but 
of meager and eccentric intellect. Her style shows 
not an element of grace. Her occasional efforts at 
fine writing are supremely ludicrous, while her at- 
tempts to lug into her discussion every fact which 
can possibly be twisted into a seeming confirmation 
of her theory, are at once palpable and absurd. She 
claims to have "discovered" a new system of Meta- 
physics, and yet in her discussions she exhibits igno- 
rance of the very rudiments of mental philosophy. 
She pretends to have elaborated a science which will 
take the place of so-called "natural science," and yet 
she makes it plain that she is profoundly ignorant of 
the facts which it has been the function of natural 
science to classify and to explain. Thus, for instance, 
she asserts that the propagation of bees, moths and 
butterflies takes place "without the customary pres- 
ence of male companions !" And having stated as a 
fact what is not a fact, she uses this as an argument to 
prove her theory that the procreation of the human 
species is mental, and not physical! — Science and 
Health, p. 541. She knows little of the English lan- 
guage, and less of Hebrew, Greek and Latin ; but in 
her disjointed arguments she does not hesitate to 
quote and translate, with all the assurance of the most 



1899. On page 12 of Science and Health, edition of 1886, 
Mrs. Eddy speaks of her opposition to gnosticism, but later 
it appeared that she meant agnosticism. Again, in the sum- 
mer of 1898 certain newspapers ridiculed her copyrighted 
statement that the word Pantheism was derived from the syl- 
van god, Pan. She took pains to correct her error, when in- 
formed of it by one outside the ranks, at the very time the 
"Christian Science Journal" was laboring to support her ig- 
norance in the premises! 



Christian Science. 53 

profound scholar, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and even 
Icelandic ! She challenges the whole Christian world 
to controversy ; and yet she does not understand the 
first principles of logic, and is blind to the innumer- 
able fallacies of her own reasoning. 

And yet this book, which is plainly the product of 
an untrained and ill-furnished mind, claims more than 
ever book claimed since the world began. It is not 
only a new gospel, but a "final revelation/' — the very 
last that shall ever illuminate the darkness of human 
ignorance and woe. It proffers a "Key to the Scrip- 
tures/' without which the manifold wealth of Reve- 
lation must forever remain hidden from our eyes, and 
contains truth sufficient to deliver the entire race for 
all time from all the ills that flesh is heir to. 

As a matter of course, such a book must needs 
possess plenary inspiration. And Mrs. Eddy is equal 
to the emergency. "No human tongue or pen," she 
declares, "taught me the science contained in Science 
and Health, and neither tongue nor pen can over 
throw it." "Genuine Christian Scientists/' says the 
Christian Science Journal of February, 1891, "are 
those who adhere to Science and Health with Key to 
the Scriptures to regulate their daily life." "It surely 
is God's word," writes a correspondent in the same 
periodical — "his best gift to fallen man ; our rich in- 
heritance, our salvation from sin, sickness and death." 
Says still another, "What a wonderful help the quar- 
terly Bible lessons are ! They seem to be the link 
connecting Science and Health and the Bible, uniting 
them as one — the word of God." 

Not only is this book alleged to be in all points 
equal to the Bible in respect of inspiration and au- 
thority, but even superior. The following, written 



54 Christian Science. 

by one of Mrs. Eddy's followers, and published in a 
tract protected by her copyright, is presumed to have 
been printed with her full approbation : "Science 
and Health does what Jesus did not, because human- 
ity was not ready for it — what the apostles could not," 
etc. — Christian Science Series, No. 6, p. 3. And ac- 
cordingly it is even presented as a substitute for our 
glorious Lord, whose name was called "Emmanuel, 
which is, being interpreted, God with us." Says one 
of its advocates, "Science and Health is 'God with 
us.' " It is, says still another, "the true Logos," and 
likewise the "Comforter, which leadeth into all 
truth." This new creed, and not the Divine Man, 
Christ Jesus, is the "Good Shepherd," who feeds 
and protects the flock of the redeemed, and "its sub- 
stance is the bread of life, which feeds the multi- 
tudes." 1 

It is not surprising, therefore, in view of her claim 
to a degree of inspiration and authority which she 
does not accord to the Bible itself, that Mrs. Eddy 
goes so far as to proclaim herself a new infallibility, 
possessing the keys of the heavenly kingdom. This 
she does, blowing her own trumpet with no uncer- 
tain sound ; and her brazen blare is echoed through- 
out the camp of her followers. "We must forsake 
the foundations of material systems, however time- 
honored," says this new mistress of mankind, "if we 
would gain the Christ as our only Saviour." — Science 
and Health, p. 221. "At the present stage of human 
experience the only way to gain this consciousness 
[i. c, of being the child of God | can be found 
through competent instruction in Christian Science, 



1 Christian Science Journal, February, 1891. 



Christian Science. 55 

by which [sic] can be learned how to conform our 
daily walks to the footprints of Jesus' pathway." — 
Christian Science Series, No. 12, p. 3. 'Those who 
live the life of science" are "children of Good," or 
God (Christian Science Series, No. 12, p. 7), and 
they only are true "immortals," while all who reject 
the claims of the new revelation are dead in tres- 
passes and in sins. — Science and Health, p. 212. "As 
Christian Scientists," said Mrs. Woodbury before 
her eyes were opened, "we have taken a stand before 
the world — the avowed exponents of a religion which 
claims to set forth the only way into the kingdom of 
heaven. . . . Every student of our college knows 
beyond all doubt that Christian Science is the narrow 
way that leads to eternal life." — Christian Science 
Voices, p. 63. 

Such claims are enough, surely, to startle the 
world ; but we have not yet fully exhibited the bound- 
less presumption of our author, nor the infinite 
credulity of her dupes. More marvelous than its 
claim to plenary inspiration and more than Messianic 
authority, is the claim asserted for Mrs. Eddy's book 
as a remedy for human ills. "The perusal of the 
author's publications heals sickness constantly," Mrs. 
Eddy calmly informs us (Science and Health, p. 
443) ; and Science and Health is her great medicine 
chest. It is a truly miraculous volume, a physician 
and Saviour in paper and ink, healing all manner of 
sickness and all degrees of depravity in those who 
read it, accomplishing the speedy redemption both of 
soul and body. It has been its author's aim to make 
it the "^Esculapius of Mind" (p. 45), and she thinks 
she has succeeded in her effort. It possesses "sana- 
tive leafage" (p. 443), and in those who read it with 



56 Christian Science. 

proper faith it "changes the secretions, expels 
humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, and 
restores carious bones to soundness/' Its author re- 
ports that, in her own "demonstrations," and solely 
by the magic truth which her book sets forth, she 
has seen shortened limbs elongated, cicatrized joints 
made supple, the lost substance of lungs restored, 
and- — more wonderful still ! — cancer that "had eaten 
its way to the jugular vein" cured instantly, and even 
the dying revived in a moment ! "A high attenuation 
of truth" — the only form in which, as the reader will 
be led to suspect, Mrs. Eddy ever administers that 
potent remedy — is a sovereign specific for boils, and 
is equally efficacious for small-pox or diphtheria. — ■ 
Unity of Good, pp. 8, 9; Science and Health, pp. 47, 
55, 56, 73> 89, 423. 

True, these wonderful results do not always follow 
at once upon the perusal of this magical book. Some- 
times, indeed, the first symptoms of the invalid, as 
he drinks at this fountain, are disagreeable. His dis- 
ease may even seem to be aggravated. This, however, 
need not discourage him. He is assured by his in- 
fallible guide that the very aggravation of his trouble 
is a hopeful sign — only, in fact, the "chemicalization" 
or mental ferment caused by the digestion of the 
truth, — a proof, indeed, of approaching recovery ; and 
that if he will continue to read — and, of course, to be- 
lieve — he will find himself well in due time. — p. 419. 

The book likewise imparts to all who read it its 
own wonderful power! Mrs. Eddy declares that 
when her mind is filled with these precious principles 
the very "aroma" of her thought, 1 like the hem of the 



1 Rudiments and Rules, p. 17. 



Christian Science. 57 

Master's garment, has power to heal; and we may 
presume that her volume is well perfumed with this 
miraculous essence. Nor is there any unwillingness 
on the part of her adherents to admit the justice of 
this claim. They count her a Saviour, and affirm, 
with Mrs. Woodbury, that "no one can remain long 
within the pure realm of her thought, yet care to con- 
tinue in sin." — Christian Science Voices, p. 129. Not 
only sinless perfection, but prophetic inspiration and 
foresight, ability to read the minds of others, even 
miracle-working power, are guaranteed by Mrs. Eddy 
to all who faithfully obey her commands, and duti- 
fully accept her teachings ! They may "reach the 
range of fetterless mind," be able to "foresee and 
foretell events," "be divinely inspired," and learn to 
"read mortal mind more accurately than the astrono- 
mer can read the stars or calculate an eclipse." — 
Science and Health, p. 250. Never did politician 
seeking votes make more reckless promises than this 
new prophetess has made in commending her own 
literary wares. She holds out to all the multitudes, 
whom she prophesies will yet follow her footsteps, 
the hope not only of attaining to the exalted heights 
to which she has attained in the healing and redemp- 
tive arts, but even of surpassing her by the splendor 
of their achievements. The extinction of sin and of 
evil in this world depends, she would have them be- 
lieve, not upon any divine permission or decree, but 
solely upon the efforts of those devoted Christian 
Scientists who, like herself, are working unselfishly 
for the world's redemption. She, indeed, is driven, as 
we shall see, to confess the impotency of her science 
to deal properly with broken bones ; she does not pre- 
tend to have raised any who were dead, nor does she 



58 Christian Science. 

dare to' hope that she herself will, like Elijah, escape 
from death ; yet nevertheless she predicts a time when 
her followers will demonstrate over every form of 
evil, "hold crime in check/' and "master sin, sickness 
and death." — Science and Health, pp. 262, 426. 

That such pretensions have gained credence to any 
considerable extent in the noon-day glare of our nine- 
teenth century Christian civilization, is a sad com- 
mentary on the gullibility of mankind. How these 
pretensions tend to overthrow the very foundations 
of the Christian faith, and to enthrone stark heathen- 
ism in the place of Christian truth, will appear in the 
further progress of our discussion. 



IV. 
A NEW MARIOLATRY. 

In Boston there is a magnificent church dedicated, 
not to Almighty God, but to Mrs. Mary Baker Glover 
Eddy, the alleged "discoverer" and "founder" of 
"Christian Science." The society under whose 
auspices the stately pile — which is said to have cost 
a quarter of a million dollars — was built, was estab- 
lished by Mrs. Eddy, who was its first, and continued 
to be for some years, its only pastor. A striking 
feature of the services in this church, which are said 
to be always attended by immense crowds, is that a 
seat is reserved perpetually for Mrs. Eddy, to whom 
the whole sect gives the title of "mother." This va- 
cant pew reminds her followers that, though absent 
in body, she is still present by virtue of her om- 
nipresent thought, and serves to emphasize the fact of 
her spiritual authority and oversight among them. 
On the wall behind the pulpit are pictures of two 
books side by side — the Bible and Science and Health 
— which these "scientific" Christians consider equal 
in authority and inspiration. 

There is also in this church a "circular apartment 
with stained glass windows, which symbolize, as does 
everything else in the building, some thought con- 
nected with religion." This room, built and fur- 
nished for Mrs. Eddy's exclusive use, was the offer- 
ing of some four thousand children of the sect, and 
is said to be one of the most expensive private rooms 



60 Christian Science. 

in the city. It is, in fact, a sort of shrine to a human 
divinity. 1 

The deference paid by Christian Scientists to Mrs. 
Eddy is, indeed, extraordinary. She is accorded all 
the rights of a prophet and an apostle. More than 
that, she is, says Horatio W. Dresser, in the Arena, 
"compared to Christ, whose face is made to resemble 
hers in a picture where the two stand side by side." 
She is accredited with having achieved more than 

1 A marble archway opposite the central door of the church 
leads to this room. The archway is draped with dark velvet 
hangings, and on either side stand white pots holding orna- 
mental palms. The vestibule is lighted from above, the 
light falling on the door and revealing over it a white marble 
tablet upon which, in gold, is inscribed the word "Love." 
The room is furnished with beautifully carved white ma- 
hogany, and the chairs are upholstered in white satin and 
gold. The couch is rilled with eider-down. A writing-desk 
of costly material and exquisite workmanship has in its 
stationery case, for Mrs. Eddy's use whenever she may 
choose to occupy the apartment, paper with the words, 
"Mother's Room" stamped upon it in gold. An elegant eider- 
down rug ornaments the floor. An exquisite cabinet holds a 
complete edition of Mrs. Eddy's works, bound in the pre- 
vailing white and gold. The mantel and table are of Mexican 
onyx, and on the former rest a magnificent French clock, 
candelabra, and imported vases. An artistically draped pic- 
ture shows the chair in which Mrs. Eddy sat when composing 
her precious book, and the table on which she wrote, with 
scattered sheets of MSS. lying on the table and the floor— 
the latter, it must be admitted, being a most appropriate indi- 
cation of the chaotic character of Mrs. Eddy's inspired com- 
positions. A door on one side opens into an elegantly fur- 
nished bed-room, while on the other side is a bath-room done 
in African marble, with pipes and faucets heavily plated with 
gold.— Vide Charleston (S. C.) Sunday News, Aug. 15, 1897. 



Christian Science. 6i 

Jesus did, and more than his apostles could achieve. 
Her utterances are accepted as divinely inspired. Her 
word is law to thousands. She occupies, in the opin- 
ion of her followers, the place of Saviour to all in 
this generation. "The key to happiness is in her 
hands, 7 ' said Mrs. Josephine Curtis Woodbury in 
the days when she blindly followed Mrs. Eddy's 
guidance, "and she is waiting until the slumbering 
world awakes to seek it before she can present it." 
Of the nature of the homage paid her we can gather 
some idea from Mrs. Woodbury's account of her ap- 
pearance before the National Association of Chris- 
tian Scientists in Chicago in 1888, if we bear in mind 
that as the number of her disciples has increased and 
the fame of her holy life and astounding miracles has 
gone abroad, the worship which she receives has be- 
come more popular and pronounced. At Chicago, in 
the year aforesaid, eight hundred of Mrs. Eddy's fol- 
lowers came together, acknowledging "one leader, one 
purpose, one cause." Memorable scenes followed 
her address on that occasion. Said Mrs. Woodbury, 
in the Christian Science Journal: 

The people were in the presence of the woman whose 
book had healed them, and they knew it. They came in 
crowds to her side, begging for one hand-clasp, one look, 
one memorial from her whose name was a power and a 
sacred thing in their homes. Those whom she had never 
seen before — invalids benefited by her book, Science and 
Health — each attempted to tell her the wonderful story. A 
mother who failed to get near held aloft her babe, that the 
little one might behold her helper. Others touched the dress 
of their benefactor, not so much as asking for more. An 
aged woman, trembling with palsy, lifted her shaking hands 
at Mrs. Eddy's feet, crying, "Help ! Help !" and the cry was 
answered. Many such people were known to go away 



62 Christian Science. 

healed. Strong men turned away to hide their tears as the 
people thronged about her with blessings and thanks . . . 
Meekly and almost silently she received all this homage 
from the multitude. . . The thoughts of those present 
went back in memory to scenes of eighteen hundred years 
ago, when through Jesus was manifested the healing power. 

The parallel between this account of the thronging 
of Mrs. Eddy and the gospel story of the thronging 
of Jesus is palpably intentional, and the writer does 
not surprise us by her remark upon the resemblances 
between the two scenes. Her expressed conviction 
that in Mrs. Eddy is manifested the same healing 
power that was manifested in Jesus, is only one of 
many evidences that this sect regards the prophetess 
of Tilton as a new Theophany. 

The worship accorded to Alary the Virgin by the 
intelligent Romanist amounts to little more than that 
accorded by Christian Scientists to their holy mother, 
if, indeed, it can be justly considered as great. The 
Romanist does not pretend that to Alary he is to look 
for the words of eternal life, whereas Mrs. Eddv 
is to her followers the accredited oracle of God, with- 
out whose instructions they have no way of attaining 
happiness or salvation. Catholics are solicitous of 
Mary's favor, and attribute marvelous efficacy to her 
intercessions with her Divine Son, to whom, after 
all, they look for their redemption; but they do not 
invest her with any divine attributes. They do not 
believe her to be an incarnation of God, nor does she 
in their system take the place of the Saviour as their 
teacher and exemplar. They place her, it is true, be- 
tween the sinner and his Saviour, but they do not 
pretend that she can save any soul without the grace 
of Jesus. But Christian Scientists deny, as we "shall 



Christian Science. 63 

see in a subsequent chapter, the whole scheme of 
salvation by grace, and claim for Mrs. Eddy, as she 
has claimed for herself, that her teaching, and it 
alone, is the "bread of life," and that salvation is im- 
possible to all who do not accept her theories and fol- 
low her example. Only by treading in the path of 
Christian Science can we learn how to follow Christ. 
The Christian Scientist, as Mrs. Woodbury has 
shown, deems it a privilege if he may but touch the 
hem of Mrs. Eddy's garment; counts her a healer 
possessed of the same power that Christ had, and 
acknowledges her book and herself to be "the voice 
of Truth," or God, "to this generation." It is the 
ambition of all true Scientists to "come closer to that 
wonderful life which is being lived among them for 
their example and hope" ;* and at least one speaker 
in the Christian Science Church of Boston is known 
to have declared her conviction that Mrs. Eddy is 
now to be considered "the Word made flesh." 2 It is 
said that many of Mrs. Eddy's followers believe that 
she will never die. "The facts of Mary Eddy" show 
that she is the willing recipient of an homage just as 
genuine, if not as elaborate, as that paid by Romanists 
to the Blessed Virgin. 

Perhaps the following rhapsody by Mrs. Woodbury 
may be considered a sample of Christian Science 
prayer to the "dearest mother" of this new church of 
Christ : 

Oh ! faithful one ! We can come into a true conception 
of thee, sharing thy love and thy power, only when we pat- 
tern our ways after thine, heeding thy precious words of 

1 Christian Science Voices, p. 188. 

2 War in Heaven, p. 57. 



64 Christian Science. 

warning and wisdom so freely given. Thou callest us from 
the worship of idols to close communion with the true and 
perfect Father, and biddest us sup with thee at the table 
spread with the gifts of daily food; but we are loath to listen 
until sharp struggles turn us, worn and weary, from the 
vanity of our ways. We test the purity and endurance of 
thy love and pity by ingratitude and disdain. We are cold 
and indifferent to thy pleadings, often turning a deaf ear to 
thy watchful, tender prayers ; yet thou dost ever wait and 
watch and pray, yearning over us thy children with that 
exquisite mother-love which knows no change nor abate- 
ment, repaying injustice and falsehood with blessing and 
healing. 

Oh ! patient Mother ! We see thee dearer as we grow 
older in truth. We learn that this book which thou hast be- 
queathed to us is the outgrowth and epitome of thy life. We 
are willing to follow as thou leadest, looking away from the 
personal sense of thee, as thou revealest to us the mother- 
heart of God! — Christian Science Voices, pp. 75-6. 

How closely this outburst of devotion follows the 
thought of the Christian as he bows before the Divine 
Son, whose example he would fain imitate, and 
through whom he holds fellowship with the Divine 
Father, will be apparent to any one who will study its 
phrases a moment. It is a rhapsody embodying essen- 
tial prayer. Most plainly does it recognize in Mrs. 
Eddy's life and character a new Theophany, and be- 
seech her to pardon the sin of not having duly heeded 
her words of instruction. As to the spirit in which 
Mrs. Eddy's instructions have been received by her 
disciples, the following, from the same authority, is 
doubtless a fair indication : 

In the sacred hours of the class-room, illumined with the 
supernal light of revelation, did we not bare our feet, like 
Moses before the bush burning with holy fire? When self- 



Christian Science. 65 

hood was hushed we saw the temple veil rent asunder; 
neither was Gehenna hidden from our astonished gaze. Our 
Leader opened the door, that we might, like the Revelator, 
have glimpses of the awfulness latent in mortal mind. Upon 
our hearts rested a sacrament of extreme unction, impelling 
us forth . . . counting not the cost of crucifixion, looking 
not backward upon Gomorrah, pressing anew the bleeding 
footprints of our past Master and our present Mother. — 
War in Heaven, pp. 27-8. 

Our Lord is here spoken of as occupying a subor- 
dinate position — a past Master! It is only just, how- 
ever, to Mrs. Woodbury, and at the same time an en- 
hancement of the value of her testimony, to add that 
since she wrote her two volumes, Christian Science 
Voices and War in Heaven, she has recanted her 
Christian Scientist profession. In a letter written to 
me December 31, 1898, she speaks regretfully of the 
"blind adoring faith" and the "idolatrous love" which 
she formerly cherished toward Mrs. Eddy, and to 
the enormity of which she has but recently awakened. 
Mrs. Woodbury has been known for a number of 
years as a poet of no mean ability, a very successful 
teacher of Christian Science, and also a healer of con- 
siderable reputation. She was at one time acting 
editor of the Christian Science Journal, and was also 
chairman of the Christian Scientist Association's Pub- 
lishing Committee. Until within the past year (1898) 
she was an earnest advocate of Christian Science 
doctrines, and her success as healer and teacher has 
at times brought her an income of several thousands 
annually. She was at last enabled to realize her folly 
in yielding so completely to the influence of Mrs. 
Eddy, and according such unquestioning faith to her 
teachings. In the Boston Herald in December last 



66 Christian Science. 

she published a sharp satire, entitled "Americanitis," 
of which the following are the concluding verses : 

Fie, Dame Christian Science ! 

We place no reliance 
On all your high-sounding stock-phrases and cant ! 

Your creed a disease is 

Like appendicitis, — 
The poison and rot of ineffable rant. 

What's the logical sequence 

Of miracle frequence, 
Except to inflate us with glamour and pelf? 

Is the Dame that seemed august 

A doll stuffed with sawdust, 
And must we believe that the doll stuffed herself? 

To call Mrs. Eddy's doctrine the "poison and rot 
of ineffable rant" after years of labor in trying to 
convert the world to faith in it as the latest revela- 
tion of Divine truth, shows a complete somersault ; 
and to declare that the chief effect of the success, 
or "miracle frequence," of Christian Science healers 
is to "inflate them with glamour and pelf," is to draw 
a sharp indictment. And, inasmuch as we behold in 
"Dame Christian Science" no less a personage than 
Mrs. Eddy, who has assuredly seemed a most "au- 
gust" dame to her deluded worshippers, the epithet, 
"a doll stuffed with saw-dust," affords a striking con- 
trast with some expressions in the prayer just now 
quoted, and indicates a very complete awakening to 
the baseless character of Mrs. Eddy's claims, and the 
infamy of the imposture which she has perpetrated. 

But Mrs. Woodbury's recantation will have little 
effect on those who have yielded themselves com- 
pletely to Mrs. Eddy, receiving her as Mrs. Wood- 
bury once did, as a "Mental Messiah," and finding 



Christian Science. 67 

themselves relieved of their ailments, as they imagine, 
by the "sanative leafage" of her miraculous book, 
and the "aroma" of her more miraculous thought. 
The last gathering at Concord, New Hampshire, of 
Christian Scientists, who came from far to pay 
"homage" to Mrs. Eddy, brought together a con- 
course of more than two thousand souls. Of this 
gathering the Peoria (111.) Journal remarked: 

The Christian Scientists of the country had a grand rally at 
Concord, Mass., 1 July 4, and "paid homage," whatever that 
may mean, to the foundress of their sect. Mrs. Eddy made 
the usual address, to the effect that she had "banished sin, 
suffering and death" from the world. And one of her ad- 
mirers present has written to the secular papers expressing 
the sorrow many of them felt when recognizing that they had 
probably seen her for the last time. That is better than any- 
thing in Mark Twain. There is no humorist equal to your 
unconscious humorist. The mental make-up of a hearer who 
pays "homage" to a woman because she has "banished death," 
and who is bowed in sorrow when the thought occurs to him 
how soon the speaker herself must die, is past finding out. 
David said that all men are "fearfully and wonderfully 
made," but some men are more wonderfully put together 
than others. 

This homage has resulted, it seems, in bringing 
upon Mrs. Eddy a flood of inquiries as to her preten- 
sions. As far back as 1895 it had brought her an 
inquiry by telegraph, to which she replied in the New 
York World, February 1, 1895, as follows: 

A despatch is given to me, calling for an interview, to an- 
swer for myself, Am I the second Christ? 
Even the question shocks me. What I am is for God to de- 

1 An error. It should have been N. H. 



68 Christian Science. 

clare in his infinite mercy. As it is, I claim nothing more 
than what I am, the discoverer and founder of Christian 
Science and the blessing it has been to mankind which eter- 
nity unfolds. 

My books and teachings maintain but one conclusion and 
statement of the Christ and the deification of mortals. 

Christ is individual, and one with God, in the sense of 
divine Principle and its compound divine idea. 

There never was, is not now, and never can be, but one 
God, one Christ, one Jesus of Nazareth. Whosoever in any 
age expresses most of the spirit of Truth and Love, the Prin- 
ciple of God's idea, has most of the spirit of Christ, of that 
Mind which was in Christ Jesus. 

If Christian Scientists find in my writings, teachings and 
example a greater degree of this spirit than in others, they 
can justly declare it. But to think and speak of me in any 
manner as a Christ is sacrilegious. Such a statement would 
not only be false, but the absolute antipode of Christian 
Science, and would savor more of heathenism than of my 
doctrines. Mary Baker Eddy. 

"In the name of the God whom she serves/' says 
the Christian Science Sentinel of February 16, 1899, 
commenting on this telegram, "and of the humanity 
she desires to serve, and to the best of her ability is 
serving in so large a measure that untold thousands 
are calling her blessed, should she be stoned and 
maligned?" Here is testimony from an unimpeach- 
able source. The Christian Science Sentinel affirms 
that "untold thousands are calling her blessed," quot- 
ing the very passage to which Romanists appeal for 
justification in worshipping the Blessed Virgin ! 
But Mrs. Eddy's disclaimer, when examined in con- 
nection with her teachings, and when its own terms 
are analyzed, turns out to be quite as much an affirma- 
tion as a denial of the very point at issue. We ob- 



Christian Science. 69 

serve in this manifesto, which is polished after the 
similitude of Mrs. Eddy's choicest rhetoric, — 

1. That Mrs. Eddy is delightfully uncertain as to 
who and what she is. Evidently she thinks herself 
no common mortal. The "discoverer and founder of 
Christian Science and the blessing it has been to man- 
kind which eternity unfolds" may well be excused for 
being uncertain as to the precise rank she occupies 
among the most august of God's "creatures, or ideas." 

2. That any claim on her part to be a Christ is ex- 
cluded by her definition of the term. Christ, she 
says, is individual — which is to say, not personal. 
She prefers to use the term individual instead of per- 
sonal, as we shall see when we come to examine her 
teachings in detail, both when speaking of God and 
man. She is a "human personality," but Christ is, in 
her opinion, neither a human nor a divine personality. 
He is the "compound idea" of God, while Mrs. Eddy, 
though a "spiritual idea," mysterious and incompre- 
hensible, both to herself and others, is not precisely 
that "compound idea." 

3. That, while denying that she is Jesus, or the 
Christ, or even a Christ, for these obvious reasons, 
she does not object to the homage bestowed upon her. 
She admits practically that she may be "the chief 
among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely," 
the highest and most favored of mortals. If, in the 
estimation of her followers, she expresses "most of 
the spirit of Truth and Love, the Principle of God's 
idea," which Principle, as we shall see, is God him- 
self, she may be justly declared to have "most of 
the spirit of Christ, of that Mind which was in Christ 
Jesus." This statement concedes the very point in 
dispute. She admits in terms that she considers her- 
self an expression or manifestation of God, since she 



jo Christian Science. 

holds that the only mind in the universe is God, and 
that she may be the highest "expression" of God. 

That she is considered a true Theophany, and is wor- 
shipped as such, whether in orthodox forms or not, is 
beyond question; and her own words show that she 
does not reject this worship, even should it go so far 
as to acknowledge that in her, as in Jesus, dwells "the 
fullness of the Godhead." 

As bearing upon this point, and also upon the 
mooted question whether Mrs. Eddy is as original in 
her alleged revelation as she claims to be, we ma) r add 
the following, which is quoted from her in the same 
periodical : 

In his (Dr. Quimby's) conversations with me, and in his 
scribblings, the word science was not used at all till one day 
I declared to him that back of his magnetic treatment and 
manipulation of patients there was a science, and it was the 
Science of Mind, that had nothing to do with matter, electric- 
ity, or physics. After this I noticed that he used that word, 
as well as other terms which I employed, which seemed at 
first new to him. He even acknowledged this himself, and 
startled me one day by saying what I cannot forget. It was 
this: "I see now what you mean, and I see that I am John, 
and that you are Jesus." At that date I was a staunch ortho- 
dox, and my theological belief was offended by his saying, 
and I entered a demurrer which rebuked him. But after- 
wards I concluded that he only referred to the coming anew 
of Truth, which we both desired, for in some respects he was 
quite a seer, and understood what I said better than some 
others did— and for one so unlearned, he was a remarkable 
man. 1 



'There is a striking similarity between the origin of 
Christian Scientism and that of Shakerism. We have here 
Mrs. Eddy's statement that when she was brooding over the 
possibility of a second advent she was startled by Dr. Quim- 
by's prophecy, "I am John the Baptist, and you are Jesus." 



Christian Science. 71 

It is evident from this that, however much the 
"theological belief" of our "staunch orthodox" may 
have been offended by Dr. Quimby's blasphemous 
suggestion, her modesty was not. And here is the evi- 
dence that not only did she learn much from Dr. 
Quimby, but talked with him about the science which 
she afterwards professed to discover. Here, too, is 
the evidence, if her own statement is to be trusted, 
that in the early sixties she was already musing upon 

Ann Lee, the founder of Shakerism, a native of Manchester, 
England, joined in 1758 a small religious body, "a remnant 
of the French Prophets," the leader of which was Jane 
Wardley, who was considered by her followers to be "the 
spirit of John the Baptist, operating in the female line." It 
was already a tenet of this body that the second advent of 
Christ was to be in the person of a woman, who was to be a 
spiritual Eve, the "first mother or spiritual parent in the line 
of the female." When Ann was "converted" and had become 
a leader, her gifts led the sect to consider her the new 
Christ for whose advent they were looking, and they forth- 
with recognized her as "Mother." Had she not promulgated 
a doctrine of celibacy it is quite probable that her new church 
would have flourished. As it is, there are now some eight or 
ten thousand Shakers in the world. Mrs. Eddy, while evi- 
dently favorable to celibacy, and prophesying a future mil- 
lennium in which the race will be propagated mentally, 
without conjugal association, recommends matrimony for the 
present. Like Ann Lee, she is recognized by her followers as 
Mother, and as the manifestation of Christ to this genera- 
tion. In her recent congratulatory message to the Atlanta 
Christian Scientist Church, read at the dedication of their 
meeting-house, she says, in her usual plain style, "The pon- 
derous walls of your grand cathedral cannot prevent me 
from entering where the heart of a Southron has welcomed 
me." This, taken in connection with her empty pew in the 
"Mother Church," squints a little at omnipresence. Great is 
human credulity, even in this nineteenth century. 



J2 Christian Science. 

another advent of truth, and cherishing the idea that 
this advent of truth was to be realized through her 
ministry. She uses the capital T in writing truth, 
and this means that she is talking of a new Theoph- 
any, a second advent of Christ. For Truth, in her 
terminology, means Christ; and just as God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, so now 
does Mrs. Eddy claim to be considered a revealer of 
the Divine will and word to man, publishing the 
glad tidings of a more perfect salvation than any 
which has yet been proclaimed. She does not conceal 
the persuasion, which has never been kept secret 
from her followers, — a persuasion springing, it may 
be, from her own gratified vanity, — that Dr. Ouimbv 
was right, and that she is indeed a Jesus to this gen- 
eration. A Jesus, that is, in the sense of being a 
Saviour; and inasmuch as "woman is the highest 
species of man," according to the revelation which she 
commands us to receive at her hands, she must needs 
be accounted superior to the Man of Nazareth. Says 
the Rev. Air. Vosburg, in a lecture delivered under 
the auspices of the Christian Science Board of Lec- 
tureship, and reported in the Xew York Mail and 
Express of March 17, 1899: 

As Jesus revealed the fatherhood of God, she, our Mother 
in the faith, has revealed to us the motherhood of God, and 
has unveiled the transcendent beauty of Christliness. And 
for this we give her love. As Christians, could we do less? 

Our Lord's dying cry was mistaken. He should 
not have said, "It is finished." His work was not fin- 
ished until Mrs. Eddy, the anointed woman, came: a 
female Christ, anointed with the Spirit, that she 
might, in her own motherly character, reveal the 
divine motherhood and explain Christ himself ! 



V. 

OBSTACLES REMOVED— THE BIBLE SET ASIDE 
AND ORTHODOXY REPUDIATED. 

The eighth, ninth and tenth verses of Revelation x. 
are a puzzle to all commentators except to Mrs. Eddy 
and her children. They are confident that "the little 
book" which John was commanded to eat was noth- 
ing less than "Divine Science," which is now embodied 
in Science and Health. "Mortal," cries this new 
infallibility, "obey the heavenly evangel. Take up 
Divine Science. Read it [/. e. } as presented in her 
book] from beginning to end, Study it, ponder it. 
It will be indeed sweet at its first taste when it heals 
you ; but murmur not over Truth, if you find its diges- 
tion bitter." — Science and Health, p. 551. And she 
proceeds to hint mysteriously that all who become 
her disciples must surfer persecution, "share the hem- 
lock cup, and eat the bitter herbs," for thus did the 
Israelites at the Paschal meal prefigure "this perilous 
passage out of bondage into the El Dorado of faith 
and hope." 

But sweet as this infallible Science is in the tast- 
ing, there is needed a certain preparation for those 
who are to partake of it as a daily passover. It is, as 
she admits, not easy to digest. It is not only sweet, 
but entirely too sweet, and liable to nauseate all who 
believe in the inspiration and authority of the Bible, 
as well as all who have ordinary respect for the cur- 



74 Christian Science. 

rent theology of evangelical Christendom. The Bible 
warns us against those who shall add to its divine ut- 
terances, and it declares itself to contain "all things 
that pertain unto life and godliness, through the 
knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and 
virtue/' Its denunciations of false teachers are 
numerous and terrible ; and its testimony that the gos- 
pel, as proclaimed by the prophets and apostles, is 
sufficient for the salvation of the world, is clear and 
emphatic. The gospel of our Lord Jesus, as it is pre- 
sented in the New Testament, is a final revelation, 
and has been so understood by the church for nine- 
teen Christian centuries. Nor is there among the 
chief sects of Evangelical Christendom any great 
divergence of views as to the teachings of the Scrip- 
tures bearing upon the main points of Christian doc- 
trine. The orthodox mind is disposed to reject any- 
thing that is proposed as a substitute for, or an addi- 
tion to, the "faith once delivered to the saints/' 
Hence the Bible must be somehow set aside if the 
revolutionary teachings of this new gospel are to be 
accepted, notwithstanding the loud professions made 
by the new prophetess of her allegiance to the Scrip- 
tures as the "chart of life," and her pretense— incred- 
ible in itself, as will appear when we come to examine 
her doctrines, and unsupported by the evidence, as 
we have already seen— that the Bible was her "only 
text-book" in studying out the great system which 
she has managed to fabricate. 

Those who consider themselves inspired cannot be 
expected to defer very much to the dictum of any 
Galilean fisherman or converted Pharisee; and a 
woman who is willing to be worshipped as the "Word 
made flesh" for this generation, need hardlv be 



Christian Science. 75 

counted upon to stand up for any word of Jesus, or 
any doctrine of Paul or Peter. Two things, there- 
fore, must be accomplished in the preparation of all 
who are to accept Christian Science. They must be 
taught that the doctrine of inspiration, as held by 
Evangelical churches, is all stuff, and that orthodoxy 
is the synonym of ignorance and narrowness. Both 
efforts combine to prepare the mind of the docile 
"student" for the assimilation of Mrs. Eddy's "ad- 
vanced thought." 

The first step, then, must be to discredit the Bible. 
The following, from a writer in a Christian Science 
periodical, edited by one of Mrs. Eddy's most loyal 
pupils, may be considered as expressive of the view 
entertained by the school : 

The general disagreement as to what is sin is owing to the 
fact that no infallible standard for judging such matters has 
been found. The Hebrew and Christian Bible is not the 
standard for the race. — Rostrum, p. 51. 

If Mrs. Eddy's book is the standard for the race, 
the Bible is not; so much, at least, is evident. But 
Mrs. Eddy says that the Scriptures are "very sacred." 
How sacred in the estimation of those who have eaten 
her "little book" we may learn from Rev. Frank E. 
Mason. "The Bible," says this distinguished advo- 
cate of Christian Science, "contains more aggregate 
truth than any other one production" ; but "to sup- 
pose that it is especially divinely inspired is unreason- 
able. . . . The Bible is a consensus of spiritual ideas, 
in the same sense that Mother Goose is the consensus 
of nursery rhymes, or as Puck and Judge are the cen- 
tralization of humor." — Seed, p. 44. This is very ad- 
vanced thought. The infallible exponents of the so- 



76 Christian Science. 

called "higher criticism'' have been saying these 
years past that the inspiration of prophets and apos- 
tles is in no wise different in kind from that of Bacon 
or Shakespeare. Now comes the "scientific" Mr. 
Mason with the statement that Isaiah and Paul had 
no inspiration other than that vouchsafed for their 
purpose to Puck and Mother Goose. Verily, to use a 
significant remark of Mrs. Eddy, "the rays of infinite 
Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring 
light instantaneously ; whereas a thousand vears of 
unconcentrated beams — human beliefs,, hypotheses, 
and vague conjectures — emit no effulgence!" — 
Science and Health, p. 498. This gleam of inspira- 
tion from Mr. Mason is startlingly brilliant ; but here 
is another from the same shining source which is, if 
anything, still more concentrated : 

Remove the gospels, the epistles and the Psalms from the 
Bible and what have you left ?— Jewish traditions, which may 

or may not be true, but which obviously contain alike truth 
and error, fact and fiction. Many portions of the Old Tes- 
tament are but vague reminiscences of periods so remote 
as to defy investigation, and which depict but the dim 
recollections of ancient legends of doubtful repute. To de- 
clare it sacrilegious to question their divine authenticity, or 
to find more inspiration and help in the utterances of Emer- 
son and Tennyson as preeminently God-inspired, is truly in- 
dicative of bigotry and narrowness.— Seed, p. 44. 

This is radiance even more effulgent than that cast 
by the Drummond light of Dr. Briggs' beaming 
thought; it is, in fact, the full splendor of Briggsism, 

combined with the latest disc .very that has been util- 
ized to aid our vision of hidden things. It is fluoro- 
scopic light giving forth X-rays of candor, making 
the whole bony frame-work of the writer's thought 



Christian Science. JJ 

visible, notwithstanding what Mrs. Eddy would term 
the "opacity" of our reason. 

Mrs. Eddy does not dare to go so far in her as- 
sertions. She assails the translators of King James' 
version, and calls attention significantly to the fact 
that there are "thirty thousand various readings in 
the Old Testament and three hundred thousand in 
the New !" And yet, though she has almost intimated 
that the New Testament is unworthy of credence, she 
prefers it to the Old. "The spiritual import of the 
Word in its earliest articulations" is "smothered by 
the immediate context" oftentimes ; "whereas the 
New Testament narratives are clearer and come 
nearer to the heart." — Science and Health, p. 495. 
Again, "the Divine Science taught in the original 
language of the Bible came through inspiration, and 
needs inspiration to be understood." — p. 215. Which 
is to say, none but those who, like herself, are inspired 
can by any means understand the holy Book. All 
others are as "blind leading the blind." She goes 
so far even as to hint that the testimony of apostles 
and prophets is unsatisfactory, and their under- 
standing of truth unreliable. From the fact that 
inspiration is required to understand the "original 
language" of the Bible there has resulted "the mis- 
apprehension of its spiritual meaning, and the 
misinterpretation of the Word, in some instances, by 
uninspired writers who were only zvriting down what 
an inspired teacher had said." By this cunning 
insinuation, so indefinite that to the unwary it may 
seem most reasonable, she brushes aside the whole 
New Testament as without authority, except as in- 
terpreted by herself. As to the Old Testament, she is 
driven, as we shall see in our examination of her 



78 Christian Science. 

teachings as to the origin and moral status of man, 
to adopt the absurd documentary hypothesis of the 
"higher critics/' and otherwise to make the narrative 
entirely meaningless to the uninitiated reader. 

It is to be noted also that nowhere has Mrs. Eddy 
defined inspiration. She makes quite orthodox state- 
ments in all she says as to the sacredness of the Scrip- 
tures, and even goes so far as to say that it is the 
"chart of Life, to mark the healing currents and buoys 
of Truth." — Science and Health, p. 329. But this 
divine revelation, she would have us believe, is locked 
forever to our understandings unless we use the "Key 
to the Scriptures 1 ' which she alone offers; and it is 
only Christian Science, of which she is the living 
compendium, which can be relied upon to "separate 
error from truth, and breathe through the sacred 
pages the spiritual sense of Life, Substance and 
Intelligence." — Ibid., page 540. Thus has she 
taught unequivocally that the text of Scripture, 
partly through the mistakes of its uninspired writers, 
and partly through the mistakes of translators, is 
meaningless unless interpreted by her "Key." Explic- 
itly she denies inspiration to all but those who were 
originally the mouth-pieces of Jehovah, and affirms 
that the original revelation has come down to us 
through such fallible media as to be entirely worth- 
less, unless we have sufficient inspiration ourselves to 
separate the chaff from the wheat ; or else, in our 
bewilderment, are permitted to turn to one like her- 
self, who is able to guide us into all truth. 

It is evident that in his bold denials of the inspira- 
tion of the Bible Mr. Mason and his correspondent 
from whom we quoted have but followed loyally in 
the path which Mrs. Eddy had marked out. She 



Christian Science. 79 

suggested and hinted her opinion as to the worthless- 
ness of the Bible as a standard for the race, and they 
have boldly avowed it. 

Having set aside the Bible, these apostles of "scien- 
tific" religion proceed to do all in their power to dis- 
credit and undermine the whole fabric of Evangelical 
Christianity. Their evil animus toward all Christian 
churches is plainly seen on almost every page of their 
literature. Mrs. Eddy's writings teem with sly 
thrusts at the faith of the Christian world. "We soil 
our garments with conservatism/' she sweetly in- 
forms us, "and afterwards must wash them clean." — 
Science and Health, p. 449. Reliance upon mere 
human authority has, in her opinion, vitiated all popu- 
lar religious systems, but her new revelation is a 
"truly Divine Science, which eschews man-made sys- 
tems." — Ibid., p. 6. Christianity, as taught by the 
churches, "stands before the black-board and prays 
the principle of mathematics to work out the prob- 
lem" {Ibid., p. 308) ; but not so her infallible doctrine, 
since "between Christian Science and all forms of 
superstition there is a great gulf fixed, as impassable 
as that between Dives and Lazarus !" — Ibid., p. 249. 
"The first gleam" of the new light which came to her 
in the hour of her "sacred discovery" was sufficient 
to wean her away from her old faith. — Ibid., p. 467. 
The Bible is not to be considered authoritative, since 
"the Jewish theology gave no hints of the unchanging 
Love of God," and Christian Science undertakes to 
supply the lacking revelation. — Ibid., p. 347. Sin can 
never be vanquished until, "in place of creeds and 
professions, the divine Principle of Being is under- 
stood and demonstrated" ; and Christian Science only 
can show how to achieve this blessed demonstration. 



80 Christian Science. 

Christian demands have "so little inspiration 
to spur mankind to Christian effort/" she thinks, 
"because men are assured that these commands were 
intended only for a particular moment and for a se- 
lect number of followers" (p. 343) ; but she does not 
tell us what church teaches this peculiar idea of Chris- 
tian duty. However, she proceeds to say that this 
teaching "is more pernicious than the old doctrine 
of foreordination — the election of a few to be saved, 
while the rest are damned." — Ibid. There is hope for 
the world, however, inasmuch as the "lethargy" pro- 
duced by such "man-made doctrines" will soon be 
broken by this new creed, which is offered confidently 
to the "advanced thinker and devout Christian." — 
Ibid., pp. 343 and 345. 

This angelic woman, whose mission it is to intro- 
duce to the world "a higher and more practical Chris- 
tianity," rivals, if she does not surpass, Ingersoll in 
her persistent caricatures of current Christian teach- 
ing. Her soul is sad, because the phrase, " 'divine 
service' has come so generally to mean public worship 
instead of daily deeds." — p. 345. Orthodox prayer 
she denounces as prayer "to God as a corporeal be- 
ing," and as hurtful and demoralizing in its tendency. 
— p. 319. "Calling on him to forgive our work badly 
done or left undone, implies the vain supposition," she 
affirms, "that we have nothing to do but to ask par- 
don, and that afterwards we shall be free to repeat the 
offense." — p. 311. The doctrine of a vicarious atone- 
ment, too, is one which she despises heartily. "Final 
deliverance from error," according to this new infal- 
libility, "is neither reached through paths of flowers, 
nor by pinning one's faith to another's vicarious ef- 
fort." — p. 327. Such a notion is, in her opinion, ab- 



Christian Science. 8i 

surd, since "whosoever believeth that wrath is right- 
eous, or that divinity is appeased by human suffering, 
does not understand God." — Ibid. In common with 
many others who count themselves "advanced think- 
ers," she is unwilling to believe that Christ died for 
the ungodly. The doctrine of the Trinity is handled 
in terms even less respectful. To her "the theory of 
three persons in one God . . . suggests heathen 
Gods." — p. 152. 

In keeping with her vicious assaults on the doc- 
trines of Evangelical Christianity, of which more 
anon, is her attitude toward the Christian ministry. 
"Now that the gospel of healing is again preached by 
the wayside, does not the pulpit scorn the message?" 
— p. 360. Therefore it is that the bitterest vials of 
her wrath are poured out upon the devoted heads of 
"the clergy." Ruled out of the synagogue, she must 
needs have her revenge, and she wreaks it upon the 
parsons, now in contemptuous remark, and anon in 
rhapsodic prophecy. Here, for instance, is a dignified 
and delicate insinuation : "Is it not professional rep- 
utation and emolument, rather than the dignity of 
God's laws, which many leaders seek?" — p. 132. 
Here, again, is a polite sneer: "One of the forms of 
worship in Thibet is to carry a praying machine 
through the streets and stop at the doors to earn a 
penny by grinding out a prayer; whereas civilization 
pays for prayers by the clergy in lofty edifices. Is 
the difference very great, after all?" — p. 316. And 
here is scorn, blazing and scorching : "If the soft 
palm, upturned to a lordly salary, and architectural 
skill, making spire and dome tremulous with beauty, 
turn the poor and stranger from the gate, they also 
shut the door on progress. In vain do the manger 
and the cross tell their story to pride and fustian. 



82 Christian Science. 

Sensuality palsies the right hand, and causes the left 
to let go its divine grasp." — p. 36. This, too, is 
equally contemptuous : "As in Jesus' days, tyranny 
and pride need to be whipped out of the temple, and 
humility and Divine Science welcomed in. The strong 
cords of scientific demonstration twisted by Jesus" — 
she is too modest, perhaps, to use her own name in 
this connection, but her meaning is plain — "are still 
needed to purge the temples of their vain traffic in 
worldly policy, and make them meet dwelling-places 
for Truth." — Ibid. Imitating him whom her followers 
term their "past Master," she, it seems, has armed her- 
self with a scourge of small cords, and proposes to 
whip all orthodox preachers out of the temple, that she 
may teach undisturbed by their contrary clamors ! 
And here is prophecy : "The powers of this world will 
fight, and command their sentinels not to let Truth 
pass the guard until it subscribes to their creeds and 
systems; but Science, heeding not the pointed bayo- 
net, marches on." — p. 121. 

In all this we recognize an echo of the Tempter's 
question, "Hath God said?" The only way in which 
Mrs. Eddy and her school can gain a hearing among 
professed Christians is to break down in some way 
their reverence for all commonly accepted interpre- 
tations of the Scriptures, and destroy their respect 
for the authorized ministry of the Church of Christ. 
What we have quoted is but a small part of the 
statements occurring on almost every page of her 
book and abounding in the literature inspired by it, 
in which this evil animus is manifest. She is well 
aware that if Christian Science is ever to be accepted 
by the world at large as a true version of the gospel 
of Christ, the clergy must be silenced, and the new 
structure must rise upon the ruins of the old. 



PART II. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF 
MENTAL HEALING. 



VI. 

A FOOLISH PHILOSOPHY AND ITS ABSURD 
CONSEQUENCES. 

"There is nothing, either good or bad, but think- 
ing makes it so." This quotation is found on the fly- 
leaf of Mrs. Eddy's miraculous volume; and is most 
appropriate, inasmuch as it sets forth her whole 
theory of medicine and her whole system of theology 
in a single sentence. The basis of her system is ideal- 
ism, whether borrowed from Bishop Berkeley or 
from theosophical sources. Mrs. Eddy makes no 
reference to Bishop Berkeley in her magnum opus, 
and boldly denies that her system has anything in 
common with Theosophy. Some of her followers, 
however, have recognized the identity of their philoso- 
phy with Berkeley's. A w r riter in the Rostrum of 
March, 1894, gravely asserts that the feat of ex- 
tracting sunshine from cucumbers, which the crank in 
Gulliver is trying to achieve, may yet prove possible ; 
and the same sapient reasoner declares that "the most 
notable exponent of this [i. e., our] philosophy was 
undoubtedly the keenly intuitive and spiritually de- 
veloped Bishop Berkeley. . . . He boldly affirmed 
all true substance to be spirit, and all true causation 
to be comprised in the free activity of such spirit. 
. . . Nature, in its ultimate analysis, was but a con- 
scious experience — the outward symbol of a divine 
universal intelligence." 

It is wonderful how often Mrs. Eddy enunciates 



86 Christian Science. 

this fundamental postulate of the idealistic philos- 
ophy, and with what labored steps, tracing the thought 
into all its ramifications, she seeks to make it the 
foundation of a two-fold system of theology and ther- 
apeutics. But she differs from Berkeley and all other 
idealists in that, while they denied the substantial ex- 
istence of external nature, they did not undertake to 
construct a new scheme of human life that would 
ignore the conscious experience and accumulated 
knowledge of the race. Berkeley, for instance, was 
an enthusiast in regard to the virtues of tar water, 
and published a lengthy treatise on the subject. He 
and all his school, moreover, were content to eat, to 
drink, and to sleep ; to take medicine when they were 
sick, and to rest when they were tired. Nor did it 
occur to any of them that such a manner of living was 
inconsistent with their philosophy. They did not 
confound the human with the Divine intelligence, nor 
conclude that because mind was the only true sub- 
stance, and all else to be considered as ideas of which 
mind is conscious, therefore we are to ignore all ma- 
terial appearances as unreal. Xor did Berkeley and 
his school ever confound the facts of creation and of 
external nature with those imaginations which are the 
product of human intellect. But all this Mrs. Eddy 
does; and the result is a philosophy that is folly, a 
theology that is heathenism, and a medical practice 
that is madness. 

"All real being/' she says, "is in the Divine Mind 
and idea"; a "false sense evolves, in belief, a subjec- 
tive state of mortal mind, which this same mind calls 
matter. . . . Mind is all, and matter is naught . . 
the only realities are the Divine Mind and idea," 
which idea, she holds, is man. — Science and Health, 



Christian Science. 87 

pp. 2, 3. This is the Alpha and the Omega of her 
thinking, and if the innumerable repetitions of this 
fundamental thought were taken out of her bulky 
volume, it would shrink into comparatively small pro- 
portions. 

Her system of mind healing is a deduction from 
this general principle of the "allness of God and the 
nothingness of matter." If Mind, or God, is the only 
reality in the universe, it follows that our perceptive 
faculties must be counted lying witnesses. Their re- 
port as to the reality of the external world being 
rejected, we must likewise reject their testimony as to 
our sensations. The universal Intelligence, which 
is none other than the Divine Mind, cannot be sick, 
nor can it, being infinite Good, create sin or sickness. 
Hence it follows that there is, in fact, no such thing 
as either sin or sickness. 

This, then, is the omnipotent truth which is to be 
prescribed, after approved homoeopathic methods, in 
attenuations high or low, as may suit the symptoms 
and the patient, in the treatment of all diseases. All 
may rise superior to sin, to sickness, and even to death 
itself, simply by refusing to admit their "false claims." 
"Mind governs the body, not partially, but wholly/' 
says this new saviour of mankind ; and if we will but 
correct our "erroneous beliefs" all will be well with 
us. The last enemy to be conquered by Christian 
Science is, of course, death ; but while admitting that 
she and all her followers of this and possibly of seve- 
ral future generations will pass through this phase of 
mortal belief, Mrs. Eddy holds out steadfastly the 
hope that ere long the advancing thought and the 
progressive sanctification of the race will usher in 
the glad day when there will be no more any belief, 



88 Christian Science. 

and consequently no further experience, of death on 
this planet. 

With the proverbial blindness of the enthusiast, 
Mrs. Eddy proceeds to apply her theory to all manner 
of sickness and of sin, and also to every conceivable 
question of diet, exercise, cleanliness, hygiene, and 
sanitary precaution, with every other phase of human 
life and conduct. In this effort she falls into in- 
numerable absurdities and self-contradictions. Thus, 
consistently adhering to her assertion that all disease 
is caused by erroneous belief, and opposed by the fact 
that young children experience ailments of which 
they have never heard, and of which they have no 
idea whatever, she is driven to prescribe for a com- 
mon ailment of childhood in this way : "A child can 
have worms, if you say so, . . . timorously holden 
in the beliefs of those about him." — p. 412. This, 
then, is her "scientific" vermifuge — Don't say so ! 
And this same prescription, which is, of course, to be 
taken, like the prescription for boils, in a "high at- 
tenuation," is equally efficacious for membranous 
croup or diphtheria, which also are to be regarded as 
"timorously holden" in the minds of the fond parents. 
Few, indeed, will be so foolhardy as to swallow such 
"scientific" nonsense, and suffer themselves to be 
treated for a "belief," while a precious child lies gasp- 
ing before them in the agonies of death. And yet 
this is precisely the practice of Christian Scientists 
in dealing with the ailments of children who are too 
young to comprehend the argument which makes up 
their treatment in the case of adults. 

Again, if children, too young to comprehend the 
philosophy of this new creed, are to be taught to 
"demonstrate," as was the little tot of whom we are 



Christian Science. 89 

told in a "scientific" periodical (Seed, p. 104) by say- 
ing, "God is all, and bumps are nothing/' ordinary 
consistency requires that a "Scientist" shall treat a 
broken bone in the same way. "If the Science of Life 
were understood/' argues Mrs. Eddy, "it would be 
found that the senses of Mind are never lost, and that 
matter has no sensation. Then the human limb would 
be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw — not with 
an artificial limb, but with the genuine one." — Science 
and Health, pp. 484- ? 5- The "unthinking lobster/' 
when he loses his claw, straightway grows another; 
and our author sees no good reason why men should 
not do the same thing when they have had a limb 
amputated by accident or otherwise. Why not heal 
in all such cases, as in so many others, simply by in- 
sisting on the "facts of Being?" 1 Mrs. Eddy can 
only say, in reply, that "the Science of Life is not 
yet understood." The fault is not in her theory, but 
only in the perverse stupidity and unbelief of those 
who refuse to " admit the supremacy of Mind." 
Hence, notwithstanding her own marvelous cures of 
cicatrized and dislocated joints and spinal vertebrae, 
etc., she is at this juncture driven to confess her faith 
in the efficacy and necessity of surgical treatment ! 
Christian Science surgery, she avers, is best, of course, 
but this branch of her new healing art will be the last 
to be developed ; and therefore she advises that "until 
the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy 
of Mind, it is better to leave the adjustment of broken 
bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon," 

1 Our author was forgetful of the fact that nails on the ex- 
tremities of human beings are reproduced like, the lobster's 
claw, from roots; but limbs have no roots. 



90 Christian Science. 

while the "scientific" healer devotes his energies to 
"mental reconstruction and the prevention of inflam- 
mation/' etc. — Science and Health, p. 400. Anti- 
septics may be dispensed with, if the surgeon will 
permit, but his skilful fingers are needed — for a time, 
anyhow! Who does not read between these lines in 
the new word of God a confession of conscious fail- 
ure? 

Still further, if our bodily sensations and ailments 
are all due solely to our beliefs, and Christian Science 
is a "remedy for weather" (pp. 383, 600), then it 
ought to be in the power of any man whose opinions 
have been corrected to rise superior to all discomforts 
due to the weather, or any other causes affecting 
the temperature about him. If fire does not burn, and 
cold does not freeze, and there is no danger of pneu- 
monia, why take thought for overshoes and overcoats, 
and why exercise ourselves about the weather? Why 
not instruct the children properly — they would be- 
lieve us, were we to begin in time — and allow them 
to play in the fire ad libitum? "You say," says Pope 
Mary Eddy, " 7 have burned my finger/ This is an 
exact statement, more exact than you suppose, for 
mortal mind, and not matter, burns it. Holy inspi- 
ration has created states of mind which are able to 
nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case 
of the three young Hebrew captives cast into the 
Babylonian furnace, while an opposite mental state 
might produce spontaneous combustion." — p. 54. 
Now, if Mrs. Eddy can only demonstrate such state- 
ments as this, all would be compelled to surrender, 
and orthodox clergymen would willingly consent to 
be scourged out of the temple. And yet she takes 
pains to advise that her theory be not put into prac- 



Christian Science. 91 

tice just yet on this particular point! "One should 
not tarry in the storm if the body is freezing, or re- 
main in the devouring flames. Unable to prevent 
bad results, one should avoid their occasion. To do 
otherwise is to resemble a pupil in addition, who at- 
tempts to solve a problem of Euclid and denies the 
principle of the problem because he fails in his first 
effort." — p. 224. The words which I have italicised 
are significant. It is a little singular that Mrs. 
Eddy's next remark following this sage advice, ren- 
dered quite necessary by her positive assertion as to 
the possibility of becoming salamanders by virtue of 
"holy inspiration," is this : "There is no hypocrisy in 
Science." And yet she is not willing to allow her own 
theories to be put to the proof — at least, not just yet ! 
Does not this look like hypocrisy ? Observe, also, the 
very cautious way in which her advice is given. // 
the body is freezing, do not tarry in the storm ; 
and if the flames are devouring, do not remain in 
them. If you find you will neither freeze nor burn, 
well; if not, get out of danger this time; but try it 
again some other time ! Perhaps, though you fail in 
your first effort, you may succeed after all ! In any- 
wise, do not deny the "Principle" which I have pro- 
claimed as guaranteeing the solution of all the prob- 
lems of sin and suffering! 

It is worthy of note, also, that if Mrs. Eddy's theory 
is correct, clothing is unnecessary, either for comfort 
or modesty. As to the former, heat and cold are sub- 
jective conditions, and "Mind governs the body, not 
partially, but wholly"; therefore, the chief thing to 
be accomplished in the adaptation of our clothing to 
the changes of the seasons — if, indeed, we are willing 
to make such an inconsistent concession to the "ma- 



92 Christian Science. 

terialistic spirit of the age" as to wear clothing at 
all — is simply to "insist on the facts of Being I" And 
as to the latter, "there is nothing, either good or bad, 
but thinking makes it so." Immodesty is an impos- 
sible thing to those who are living the life of Science, 
in any event, if they choose to think so; why not, 
therefore, refuse to "admit the claims" of mortal 
sense in this particular, and so rise superior to the 
"unscientific" mandates of Madame Grundy? Adam 
in Eden knew not his nakedness ; what necessity is 
there that an immortal should yield to the "impression 
of nakedness and shame?" Has not Mrs. Eddy 
taught us, in connection with the fact of Adam's 
awakening to shame, that man had never lost "his 
rich inheritance and God's behest — dominion over all 
the earth?" — p. 525. Yet she does not so much 
as allude to this question, save in the one hint she 
has given us, in speaking of Adam's nakedness. And 
so far as her vague hint means anything, it means 
that clothing is unnecessary, and shame a delusion of 
"material man," which may be readily corrected by 
imbibing Christian Science, and so becoming "spirit- 
ual." 

Again, if Mrs. Eddy's view as to the supremacy 
of mind over body is correct, dirt is a mere delusion, 
and bathing can be as readily effected without soap 
and water as with them. "Bathing and rubbing to 
alter the secretions or remove unhealthy exhalations 
from the cuticle receive a useful rebuke from Chris- 
tian healing."— p. 381. "The daily ablutions of an 
infant are no more natural and necessary than would 
be the process of taking a fi sn out f wa ter every day 
and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive 
more vigorously thereafter in its native element. . . 



Christian Science. 93 

Water is not the natural habitat of humanity." — p. 
411. These utterances of our inspired oracle are suffi- 
ciently plain to delight a tramp, and are "adapted, if 
not designed," to elicit the lasting gratitude of all 
careless mothers. But, nevertheless, "mother Mary" 
believes that "cleanliness is next to godliness," though 
she affirms, with all the solemnity of inspiration, that 
"washing should only be for the purpose of keeping 
the body clean," and that "this can be effected 
without scrubbing the whole surface daily." — Ibid. 
A whole daily bath, therefore, for infant or adult, is 
an "unscientific" thing ! But why does she not show 
how to bathe "scientifically" without using any soap 
and water ? If the power of Mind can be relied on to 
cure cancers, scrofulous affections, and all manner of 
diseases, alter the secretions, etc., why may we not 
accomplish the cleansing of the body by mental meth- 
ods without resorting to any material aids? This is 
one more instance of Mrs. Eddy's unwillingness to 
take her own medicine. Her God is everything — ex- 
cept soap and water ! 

Still another absurdity in Mrs. Eddy's reasoning 
is found in her discussion of the subject of poisons. 
Her theory is that all drug action is due to faith in 
the helpful or deleterious effect of the drug, as the 
case may be. But what of poisons administered to 
domestic animals, or taken by mistake? It is a fact 
that strychnine, whether swallowed by a cat or by 
a human being, if the quantity be sufficient, will cause 
death speedily, while the effect of cyanide of potas- 
sium, administered to man or beast, is infallibly cer- 
tain and swift. How can these facts, which are ad- 
mitted by all Christian Scientists, be accounted for in 
harmony with their theories? Mrs. Eddy admits 



94 Christian Science. 

that if a dose of poison is swallowed through mis- 
take, the patient dies, while physician and patient are 
expecting favorable results. — p. 70. This, notwith- 
standing her theory that the action of drugs in every 
case is due to the expectation or faith of the person 
taking it. And yet she attempts to account for the 
event in this way : "A few persons believe the potion 
swallowed by the patient to be harmless ; but the vast 
majority of mankind believe . . . the drug used 
to be poisonous/' and "the result is controlled by the 
majority of opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal 
minority of opinions in the sick chamber." — p. 70. 
But how could the majority opinion govern the re- 
sult, when, as she has supposed, nobody knows that 
a mistake has been made? According to this, the 
opinion of mankind as to a hypothetical case operates 
with equal certainty to give a drug its power to take 
life, whether anybody knows the drug has been ad- 
ministered or not ! Thus, the very fact which to all 
rational minds upsets her theory, she seizes upon as 
a proof of it! And the same transparent fallacy is 
her avenue of escape from many other embarrassing 
difficulties. 

Marston, who is perhaps one of the most plausible 
of Mrs. Eddy's imitators, accounts for the origin of 
materia rnedica in this way: 

We can conceive a time in the mental history of the race 
when no therapeutic value was assigned to certain drugs, 
when., in fact, it was not known that they possessed any! 
How did it come to pass that common thought, or any 
thought, endowed them with healing virtue in the first place? 
Simply in this way: Man finding himself unprotected, and 
liable to be hurt by the elements in the midst of which he 
lived, forgot the true source of healing and began to seek 



Christian Science. 95 

earnestly for material remedies for diseases and wounds. 
The desire for something led to experiments ; and with each 
trial there was associated the hope that the means applied 
would prove efficacious. Then what was at first an earnest 
hope came at length to be a belief ; and thus, by gradual steps, 
a belief in the contents of the entire pharmacopoeia was es- 
tablished. 

Is it not perfectly obvious that in the case supposed 
the beliefs as to the action of drugs would grow out 
of experience? Hope could become belief only when 
results were favorable ; and when the drug proved to 
be poisonous, the belief that it was a poison would be 
produced by its poisonous effects. 

According to this theory, says Dr. Buckley, "if it 
were generally believed that alcohol were unintoxi- 
cating, nourishing, and bland as milk, it would be an 
excellent article with which to nourish infants ; and 
if, on the other hand, it were generally believed that 
milk were intoxicating, all the influences of alcohol 
would be produced upon those who drank it. If the 
public could only be educated to believe alcohol to be 
nourishing, the entire mammalian genus might be 
nursing their offspring upon alcohol with equally 
good results/' 

Such a transparent delusion is but a step from in- 
sanity. 

But there are more. We quote now a practical 
question which Mrs. Eddy, in one of her treatises, 
undertakes to answer. Let the reader imagine it 
gasped out by a visitor, "fair, fat and forty/' who 
has just arrived panting, perspiring, wheezing, strug- 
gling for breath, as she drops into a chair on a hot 
summer day, after a walk of ten blocks, which she has 
taken in order that she may propound her important 



96 Christian Science. 

question to one whom she regards as "the voice of 
God to this age :" 

"How — can I — believe — in no such thing — as mat- 
ter — when I weigh over — two — hundred — pounds — 
and carry — about this — weight daily?" 

Now, we venture to say that in all such cases it is 
vain for this exponent of a "higher and more practi- 
cal Christianity" to assure her visitor, as she has 
done, that "matter is but the manifestation of mortal 
mind/' and that her "weight is an adipose belief of 
substance." The plain truth is, that Mrs. Eddy has 
none of that precious remedy — the desire of quacks, 
the despair of chemists, the long-acknowledged de- 
sideratum of the entire medical fraternity — anti-fat, 
in her mental pharmacy. Granting, for the sake of 
argument, her assertion that "substance is more than 
matter — even the glory and permanence of Spirit" ; 
that "which is hoped for, but unseen" ; and, unlike 
an "adipose belief," "a thing that the senses cannot 
take in" ; there is, in all these lucid and sublime state- 
ments, little encouragement for those who are hope- 
lessly and helplessly fat. Though she may teach 
them "the possibility of the absolute destruction of 
the consciousness of weight," is not that, in fact, the 
thing "hoped for, but unseen?" It may be consid- 
ered as reasonably certain that very few of those who 
tip the scales at two hundred pounds or over, will 
ever cease to believe in the reality of matter, Mrs. 
Eddy's profound philosophy to the contrary notwith- 
standing. No such creed as hers can succeed with- 
out abundance of anti-fat, and the article which she 
offers to the public is by no means satisfactory.— Vide 
Christian Science Series, Xo. 1, p. 7. 

On a par with Mrs. Eddy's delightful prescription 



Christian Science. 97 

for fat folks, is her theory as to the way in which 
men and women may retain youthful vigor and 
beauty as long as they live. She expostulates against 
the common mistake of thinking that we are growing 
old, and quotes from a medical journal the following 
"sketch from the history of an English lady :" 

Disappointed in love in her early years, she became in- 
sane and lost all account of time. Believing that she was 
still living in the same hour which parted her from her 
lover, taking no note of years, she stood daily before the 
window watching for his coming. In this mental state she 
remained young. Having no consciousness of time, she liter- 
ally grew no older. Some American travellers saw her 
when she was seventy-four and supposed her a young lady. 
She had not a wrinkle or gray hair, but youth sat gently on 
cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted 
with her history conjectured that she must be under 
twenty 

This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful hint 
that a Franklin might work upon with more certainty than 
when he coaxed the enamoured lightning from the clouds. 
Years had not made her old, simply because she had taken 
no cognizance of the passing years, or thought of herself as 
growing old. Her belief that she was young proved the 
bodily results of such a belief. She could not age while be- 
lieving herself young, for the mental state governed the phys- 
ical. — Science and Health, p. 141. 

Thereupon she proceeds to surpass Franklin by 
deducing a general law from a single alleged fact, 
which Franklin could not have done. "Impossibili- 
ties never occur," she says, and there is no gainsay- 
ing that. "One instance like the foregoing proves it 
possible to be young at seventy-four," she goes on to 
say ; but this oracle must be considered rather doubt- 
ful. Proceeding to teach us the secret of maintaining 



98 Christian Science. 

youthful beauty and strength, even when we are 
nearing four-score, she dogmatizes on this wise : 

The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and 
gives ugliness to age. . . . Never record ages. . . . Mi- 
nute chronological data are no part of the vast forever. Time- 
tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against 
manhood and womanhood. But for the error of measuring 
and limiting all that is good and beautiful we should enjoy 
more than three-score years and ten, and yet maintain our 
vigor, freshness and promise. We shall continue to be al- 
ways beautiful and grand whenever mortal mind so decrees. 
Each succeeding year will then make us wiser and better in 
looks and deeds. — p. 142. 

"Whenever mortal mind so decrees," we shall al- 
ways remain young. And yet she defines mortal 
mind as "error creating other errors." — p. 583. Such 
a decree would go far toward proving her definition ! 

Desiring still further to guard us against the "acute 
belief of physical life," which is, she intimates, inci- 
dent to advanced age, while "not so disastrous as the 
chronic belief," though she does not explain the pre- 
cise difference between the two, she mentions sundry 
facts as corroborative of her theory. She has seen 
a lady of eighty-five who had her second sight, an- 
other who had new teeth, and one old gentleman of 
sixty who had retained all his teeth and had not one 
"decayed cavity!"— p. 143. But, unfortunately for 
her argument, she cannot tell us that these old people 
first believed they would regain their sight, etc., and 
then found the results happening in accord with their 
expectation. The fact is, second sight and new teeth 
in old age are always a surprise to those who experi- 
ence them. As to old people who retain a remark- 
ably youthful appearance, and even sound teeth, such 



Christian Science. 99 

cases are numerous. The late Charles A. Dana was 
vigorous almost to the last month of his long life. 
Beecher died when apparently in the prime of life, 
and Talmage is stalwart and strong at seventy. Cases 
in which elderly men and women have little signs 
of age in their appearance, no gray hairs, and whose 
natural force is not abated, are numerous; but most 
of these find their eyes dim. This, according to Mrs. 
Eddy, is altogether unnecessary; but it will be ob- 
served that not a few of these "metaphysical healers" 
say nothing about the fact that they themselves are 
under necessity of wearing glasses. 

The case of the English lady must be taken with 
some grains of allowance. All who have much ac- 
quaintance with the inmates of our insane asylums 
can tell of persons who labor under the same delusion, 
imagining themselves to be young — some of them 
young girls, w r ho declare themselves engaged to be 
married to presidents, kings, and even, in some cases, 
to divine beings — and yet 'they are hairless, toothless, 
and decrepit. Now, if a delusion kept the English 
girl from growing old, as Mrs. Eddy testifies it did, 
why does not the same delusion produce the same re- 
sults in others? Again, is it not a little singular that 
the only case which Mrs. Eddy can adduce in proof 
of her theory that the mind creates the body, and de- 
termines, all its sensations, is that of a lunatic? This 
demonstrates the fact, Mrs. Eddy herself being wit- 
ness, that in order to retain our youth for all time, 
we must first become insane ; and it is obvious to all 
who may lawfully be permitted to go at large that if 
we cherish such fancies as Mrs. Eddy would have us 
cherish, it will not be long before our friends will 
think it wise to send us to those humane institutions 



ioo Christian Science. 

in which persons who fully agree with Mrs. Eddy are 
sometimes treated for their "beliefs. ' n 

I have alluded to Mrs. Eddy's theory that the pro- 
creation of the human species is a mental, and not a 
physical process. Commenting on the creation of 
Eve, she remarks that "the next change in the manner 
of mortal birth may usher in the glorious fact of cre- 
ation — namely, that both man and woman proceed 
from God, and are his eternal children, belonging to 
no lesser parent." This is a delicate intimation of her 
idea that at some future time marriage will be super- 
fluous, and children will be born into the world in 
some quite transcendental fashion. Again, "did God 
at first create one man unaided — that is, Adam — but 
afterward require the union of the two sexes in order 
to create the rest of the human family? No! He 
made and governs all." — p. 524. Which means that 
no union of the sexes is requisite in order to the mul- 
tiplication of the race. But, with her usual consis- 
tency, she is careful to advise her students not to un- 
dertake to put her doctrines into practice. "Until it 
is learned that generation rests on no sexual basis, 
let marriage continue, and let us permit no such dis- 
regard of law as may lead to a worse state of society 
than now exists." — p. 274. Which is to say, it is bad 
enough now, and none need make it worse by at- 
tempting to put Christian Science doctrine into prac- 
tice ! 

Once more, if the doctrine is true that mind con- 
trols the body, and is, in fact, the creator of the body, 



1 Three cases have come to my knowledge of persons who 
became insane through Christian Science. Two are men- 
tioned in a subsequent chapter.— Anth or. 



Christian Science. ioi 

it follows necessarily that human beings need not eat 
in order to live. Food, like drug-medication, owes 
its beneficial effects entirely to the belief of mortal 
mind. Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to adopt this con- 
clusion, and to urge it with her wonted energy. She 
affirms it to be "self-evident that food does not affect 
the existence of man/' since God is our only Life. 
But, just at this point, across the track of her daring 
thought, a warning signal is displayed. It is dis- 
played in a significant marginal note, "Hasten 
slowly!'' and it is swung with firm hand in the text, 
as follows : "It would be foolish to venture beyond 
our present understanding, foolish to stop eating, un- 
til we gain more goodness and a clearer comprehen- 
sion of God.'' — p. 387. Most wisely, she leaves it to 
her followers to decide when they have gained suffi- 
cient goodness, and a sufficiently clear comprehension 
of God to warrant them in venturing to do without 
food ! This sage advice is either the dodge of a self- 
convicted charlatan, or else is a flash of sanity out of 
an unbalanced brain. Perhaps it is both. 



VII. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND FAITH HEALING. 

Were Christian Science the only system of cure 
without medicine, its success would be much harder 
to explain. But healing without medicine is nothing 
new. Cases in which bed-ridden patients have been 
enabled to rise, and cripples to throw away their 
crutches, are so numerous and so well attested as hav- 
ing occurred under the treatment of faith-healers, 
mesmerists, and even of regular medical practitiom 
that the claims of Christian Science in this particular 
need excite no surprise. Inasmuch as healing by faith 
has some things in common with Christian Science 
healing, it may be well at this point in our discus- 
sion to consider some of the facts which have come to 
light as to the success of faith-healers in modern 
times. 

Dr. Tuke, in his great work on the Influence of the 
Mind on the Body, admits that marvelous cures were 
wrought by Prince Hohenlohe, the Roman Catholic 
Bishop of Sardica. Among others, lie mentions two 
cases of paralysis. One was an old gentleman, sev- 
enty years of age, who had been pronounced incur- 
able, was unable to walk, unable even to open his par- 
alyzed hand, and had been confined to his room for 
many years. After the Prince had prayed with him 
he regained his ability to walk, could use his hand 
readily, and was entirely cured. The other was a 
young man who had also been unable to use his legs 



Christian Science. 103 

for two years. After the first and second prayers of 
the Prince he was partially relieved, and after the 
third was fully healed. 

Joseph Gassner, a Roman Catholic priest of Swabia, 
effected many cures. Father Matthew, the great 
Irish temperance reformer, was a very successful 
healer. Even after his death multitudes visited his 
tomb, hoping to derive benefit from his sleeping body, 
and of these many were relieved, and on departing, 
left their crutches behind them. Roman Catholic 
traditions tell of many such instances in all ages of 
the church, and in the light of well-known facts 
there is no reason to doubt that many cures w r ere ef- 
fected. 

Among Protestants several names are famous in 
connection with the cure of diseases without medi- 
cine, and solely by means of the prayer of faith. One 
of these was Dorothea Trudel, whose establishment 
at Manheim enjoyed great reputation. Some remark- 
able recoveries of health undoubtedly took place under 
her ministrations. 

More recently Rev. W. E. Boardman attained con- 
siderable notoriety in consequence of his alleged 
power with God in healing disease. For many years 
his faith-cure home in London, known as Bethshan, 
was frequented by seekers after health. It w r as re- 
ported far and wide that hundreds of cases of cancer, 
of consumption, even in its last stages, of chronic 
rheumatism, of paralysis and lameness, had been cured 
in this establishment ; and the canes, crutches, etc., 
left by the sufferers were shown to inquirers to stim- 
ulate their faith. The usual method employed by Mr. 
Boardman and his associates was to anoint the pa- 
tient w T ith oil, and then pray, though other means were 



104 Christian Science. 

sometimes used to excite faith. Many cases were also 
treated by correspondence, with the same results as 
those following the treatment in Bethshan. 

The name of Dr. Cullis, of Boston, was long famous 
because of his well-known success in healing disease 
by prayer and faith. Out of his movement grew the 
faith-healing work now done in New York, and also 
at Old Orchard, Maine, under the direction of Rev. 
A. B. Simpson and others. There is no reason to 
doubt that a large number have been benefited and 
many permanently cured by their ministrations. 

George O. Barnes, the Kentucky "Mountain Evan- 
gelist/' claimed to possess healing power. Mar- 
velous cures were alleged also to have been wrought 
by Mrs. Mix, a Connecticut negress. Many respect- 
able people, "without distinction of age, sex, creed, 
or color," believed that they had been cured by her 
prayers, and sincerely mourned her death. 

Mrs. R. Stokes Adderton, of Lexington, N. C, a 
lady of high character, related to the writer that when 
she was an infant of two months her mother died. 
The family were greatly distressed to know how the 
child was to be reared, no wet-nurse being obtainable. 
A company of Christian ladies united in prayer, the 
grandmother leading in the petition that God in his 
mercy would provide some way in which the child 
could be nourished. While she was praying she felt 
her own mammary glands sensibly stimulated, and, 
on rising from her knees, she found herself able to 
suckle the child, which she continued to do until it 
was weaned. 

In all Roman Catholic countries, and also in Russia 
and other lands under the sway of the Greek Church, 
may be found places where great stacks of canes, 



Christian Science. 105 

crutches and splints are exhibited which have been 
left there by those who, as Dr. Tuke says, there is no 
reason to doubt have been cured and relieved of con- 
tracted joints by the prayers offered at some shrine, 
or by the supposed efficacy of their relics. The most 
famous of these shrines is that of Lourdes, in France, 
whose sacred waters, springing up in the grotto 
where, according to the faith of all good Catholics, 
the Virgin Mary revealed herself in 1858 to a peasant 
girl, are accredited with thousands of cures. To this 
shrine come pilgrims from all parts of the world, and 
their gifts have been sufficient to erect a large church, 
which was consecrated in 1878 in the presence of an 
immense congregation, thirty-five cardinals and other 
dignitaries of the Roman hierarchy by their presence 
or otherwise assisting in the ceremonies. Many 
whose gifts aided in building this splendid monu- 
ment to superstition professed to have been cured by 
the sacred waters of diseases which reputable physi- 
cians had declared incurable. 

In this category of faith-cures, perhaps, we ought 
to include the cure of scrofula by the royal touch. 
This disease was called "King's Evil" by former gen- 
erations, because it was supposed that the touch of a 
King was an infallible cure for it. There is ample 
testimony proving, as well as any historical fact is 
proven, that royal fingers did effect innumerable cures 
of this particular malady. The roystering Charles 
II. touched nearly 100,000 persons, and James, in one 
of his journeys, essayed to heal as many as 800 cases 
in Chester Cathedral at one time. Macaulay says that 
when William III. abandoned the practice it brought 
upon him "an avalanche of the tears and cries of 
parents of children who were suffering from scrof- 



106 Christian Science. 

ula. Bigots lifted up their hands in horror at his im- 
piety." There were those who, denying his right to 
the throne, insinuated that he feared to try a power 
which pertained only to legitimate sovereigns ; but 
this contention was altogether groundless, for, says 
an old author, "the cure of the King's Evil by the 
touch of the King does much puzzle our philosophers, 
for whether our Kings were of the house of York or 
Lancaster, it did cure for the most part." 

Nor have faith-cures been confined to Christian 
lands and to the ministries of Christian ministers and 
sovereigns. Missionaries and travellers testify that 
marvelous cures sometimes follow the incantations 
and other magical rites performed by heathen priests 
and by the medicine men of savage tribes. The witch 
doctors of Africa and their congeners among the 
negroes of our own country do undoubtedly cause, as 
well as cure, diseases. A community in Georgia, not 
far from Atlanta, was greatly excited a few years ago 
by terrible diseases which followed the threats of one 
of these negro quacks. The ignorant peasantry in 
many parts of Austria, Germany and Russia, as well 
as the negroes and some illiterate whites in our own 
land, still believe in witchcraft, and are ready to 
adduce many strange coincidences in justification of 
their belief. The medical profession acknowledges 
that the facts which prove the success of these charla- 
tans, both in bringing about some distressing troubles 
and in removing others, are marvelous. 

The Mormons claim to have an unbroken record of 
success in working miracles of healing since the first 
establishment of their church, and the evidence is con- 
clusive that in not a few cases their claims have been 
justified by the facts. That the prayers and anoint- 



Christian Science. 107 

ings of their prophets, apostles and priests have been 
followed so frequently by recovery from sickness is 
one of the most convincing of the signs by which they 
challenge the faith of the ignorant and credulous. The 
case of Newell Knight, as reported by Joseph Smith, 
excited great interest in the early days of Mormon- 
ism, and led not a few converts into the new prophet's 
fold. According to Smith's account, Knight's body 
was acted upon in a very strange manner, his visage 
and limbs being often "distorted and twisted in every 
shape and appearance possible to imagine," and some- 
times he was "caught up and tossed most fearfully/' 
He thought himself possessed of a devil, and his 
friends shared the opinion. Being visited by the 
Mormon prophet, Knight begged him to cast out the 
devil, professing to believe that Smith could do it. 
Smith, in compliance with this request, rebuked the 
devil and commanded him to depart. The devil 
obeyed, as was believed; Knight was overwhelmed 
with joy, and, if Smith's account is to be credited, was 
"lifted by invisible power until the beams of the house 
would allow him to go no farther \" Knight testified 
that he saw the departing demon assume the form of 
a black cat as he vanished in the bush ! 

The case of Mrs. Johnson, of Hiram, Ohio, was an- 
other notable Mormon miracle, and the following are 
the facts as given by Kennedy i 1 

When Revs. Ezra Booth and Symonds Ryder, 
both of whom were for a time carried away by the 
new fanaticism, were investigating the claims of 
Mormonism, prior to their conversion, they deter- 
mined to subject the pretensions of Smith to a crucial 



1 Vide Kennedy's Early Days of Mormonism. 



108 Christian Science. 

test. Their neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, had suffered 
from paralysis for six years, being unable to use her 
right arm, or even to raise it to her head. Accom- 
panied by this lady, with her husband and a physi- 
cian, Booth and Ryder called on Smith. Without ac- 
quainting him with their purpose, the two ministers 
introduced a conversation as to the truth of the new 
doctrines which Smith was proclaiming. In the 
course of this conversation Ryder asked Smith if it 
were true that he claimed to work miracles. "I can- 
not work miracles,'' was the answer; "but I believe 
that God, working through me, can do so." At a 
preconcerted signal from one of the party Mrs. John- 
son appeared. Said Ryder, "Here is Mrs. Johnson 
with a lame arm ; has God given any power to men 
now upon earth to cure her?" Thereupon Smith 
moved backward a few steps, looking intently as he 
did so into the woman's eyes, and then, advancing to 
her side, took hold of her palsied hand and raised it 
to her shoulder, saying solemnly as he did so, 
"Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I 
command thee to be made whole !" Then he abruptly 
left the room. Mrs. Johnson discovered immediately, 
to her amazement, and that of all the rest of the party, 
that her hand, which had been so long useless, was 
perfectly restored, and it so continued until her death, 
which occurred fifteen years afterwards. This oc- 
currence had not a little to do with the conversion to 
Mormonism of the two ministers, both of whom ac- 
cepted Smith as a prophet ; and, though both of them 
lived to be undeceived, and died in the communion of 
the churches which they left to embrace the Mormon 
faith, they did not retract their testimony as to this 
case, nor even modify it in any particular. 



Christian Science. log 

It may be asked, How are all these facts to be ac- 
counted for? We answer, 

I. As Christians we are compelled to believe that in 
not a few cases God answers the prayers of his people 
by healing their diseases. When our Lord was in 
the flesh he honored the sincere though ignorant faith 
of the woman who touched the hem of his garment, 
and we see no reason to deny the possibility of heal- 
ing by divine power in answer to the prayer of faith. 
This is no more unreasonable in itself than the pos- 
sibility of conversion in answer to prayer, which no 
evangelical Christian can doubt. Nor can we deny the 
possibility of a divine intervention in answer to prayer, 
even in the case of one who is a pervert to an erro- 
neous creed. There, may be Christian Scientists, as 
there may be Mormons also, who, despite the errors 
embodied in their false creeds, have yet faith in the 
love and mercy of God, and are sincerely desirous of 
glorifying his name. In the case of Christian Scient- 
ists, I have been led to think that some persons have 
been brought, through Mrs. Eddy's presentation of 
God as Love, to realize the blessedness of the divine 
love as they never did before — divine mercy answer- 
ing their prayers and comforting their souls, and even 
healing their bodies, notwithstanding the errors into 
which they have fallen. I recall the case of one lady, 
whom I am compelled to regard a sincere Christian, 
who declares that she has enjoyed a peace and joy in 
God as her Saviour and ever-present friend and 
helper since she became a convert to Mrs. Eddy's 
doctrines that she did not enjoy before. This is not 
impossible. She is a woman of untrained intellect, 
unable to grasp the philosophical subtleties of Mrs. 



no Christian Science. 

Eddy's theory, and yet holds steadily to her belief in 
God as infinitely wise and loving, and "not far from 
every one of us," if haply we may feel after him. 

The mistake of professional faith healers, and of all 
who have followed them in their wanderings from 
the truth, has been that of ignoring the limitations of 
prayer as exhibited in the Lord's Prayer and as illus- 
trated in the experience of our Lord himself. Jesus, 
in Gethsemane, repeating in his great agony that 
prayer which he had taught his disciples to repeat, 
shows us in what spirit we must pray. We must say, 
as he did, 'Thy will, not mine, be done." God has 
not given men the right to demand any and every 
blessing at his hands without reference to His own 
purposes. Sickness may be for our good, since "whom 
the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom he receiveth." In such a case, did we be- 
lieve, as we should, that our affliction was working 
out some good purpose, we would pray rather to 
suffer as long as God might choose to allow us to 
suffer. "Wife," said a Christian minister to his wife, 
who had been a patient sufferer from rheumatism, 
bed-ridden for twenty years, "would you not rather 
leave this scene of suffering and be with Jesus at 
once?" "If it is God's will that I should suffer," she 
answered, "I would rather lie here in pain than to join 
in the songs round the throne." This was the spirit 
of an intelligent Christian faith, and that suffering 
saint whose faith, patience and submission were so 
perfect was enabled, in her tribulations, to rejoice 
with "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Were this 
not true, we should lose much of our comfort in 
affliction which enables us to sing joyfully, — 



Christian Science. hi 

"Trials make the promise sweet, 

Trials give new life to prayer ; 
Trials bring me to his feet, 

Lay me low, and keep me there." 

2. Again, even when prayer for recovery from sick- 
ness is answered, it is not necessary to suppose that 
the divine interposition must be in every case miracu- 
lous. When God answered the prayer of Hezekiah 
it was by sending Isaiah back into the palace with 
instructions to apply a poultice of figs to the king's 
carbuncle — a good prescription, as many who have 
tried it for the same ailment can testify. This, too, 
is probably the meaning of the apostle's direction in 
James v. that the sick should send for the elders of 
the church, who shall "pray over him, anointing him 
with oil in the name of the Lord." "The prayer of 
faith shall save the sick," it is said ; and the anointing 
was required, most probably, because anointing with 
medicated oils was a common mode of medical treat- 
ment in that day. 

Physicians were not considered, either in the apos- 
tolic or in the Jewish church, as pursuing a calling 
that was contrary to the Divine will. The words of 
Ecclesiasticus, pronounced more than two thousand 
years ago, were doubtless then esteemed as wise as 
they must be to-day by all who are free from irra- 
tional vagaries : 

"The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth ; 
and he that is wise will not abhor them. My son, in 
thy sickness be not negligent ; but pray unto the Lord, 
and he will make thee whole. Leave off thy sins and 
order thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from 
all wickedness. Then give place to the physician, for 
the Lord hath created him ; let him not go from thee, 



ii2 Christian Science. 

for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in 
their hands there is good success. For they also shall 
pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper that which 
they give for ease and to prolong life." 

King Asa's mistake was, not in seeking unto the 
physicians, but in not seeking unto the Lord, who 
only could bless the remedies they administered. It is 
by no means improbable that Luke continued to prac- 
tice his profession as long as he lived, being simply 
a medical missionary, combining bodily healing with 
his ministry to the souls of the people to whom he 
went. 

Even when medicines are not used it is unnecessary 
to assume that recovery from sickness in answer to 
prayer is miraculous. The forces which cause disease 
are natural, and those which result in healing are 
likewise natural. 

Our discussion of this subject has made it evident 
that Christian Science has no monopoly of the priv- 
ilege of healing without medicine. It may now be 
inquired. What has Christian Science healing in com- 
mon with faith-cure? Mrs. Eddy admits that in 
some instances faith cures are as speedy as her own, 
but contends, without adducing any fact to support 
her contention, that faith cures are only temporary, 
and liable to result in worse diseases. But all that she 
says about faith in drugs or faith in God as opposed 
to her doctrine of faith in Mind is self-contradictor v. 
If, in the case of drug cures, which she does not deny, 
having cured by means of drugs in her own practice, 
faith in the remedy is the potent cause, ordinary reas- 
oners will be unable to distinguish between the cura- 
tive potency of faith in a remedy and faith in mind 
healing. If faith heals in one case, why not say it 



Christian Science. 113 

heals in the other? Mrs. Eddy's assumption that 
cures by her method are divine cures, while those by 
faith-healers are merely cases of self-cure or self- 
hypnotization, is gratuitous. The fact is, all who 
place themselves under the treatment of a "Scientist," 
do so with some degree of faith in the outcome of the 
treatment. Usually they have been persuaded that 
Mrs. Eddy has made indeed a wonderful discovery, 
and that the mind cure is a marvelous and infallible 
w T ay of healing sickness. This confidence the Chris- 
tian Science practitioner makes it his business to in- 
crease by every means in his power. And, in so far 
as there is any faith in God, which all "Scientists" 
profess to cherish, that faith, however ignorant, is 
one which the Father of mercies may deign to bless. 
Thus it is evident that Christian Science healing may 
be counted in some cases but another form of faith- 
cure. 

Aside from Divine interposition, however, the suc- 
cess of faith-healers, of Christian Scientists, and even 
of African witch-doctors, may be accounted for on 
principles long ago recognized by the medical pro- 
fession, and which they seek to apply in their prac- 
tice. Of these we shall now speak. 



VIII. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE vs. MENTAL HEALING 
BY THE MEDICAL FACULTY. 

In the facts now to be related we find the basis of 
reality which has made Mrs. Eddy's theories so dan- 
gerous. Half-truths are more hurtful than whole lies. 

It has long been known to the medical profession 
that a large number of cases can be healed without 
any medicine whatever. Current medical science 
takes full account of the mental factors, both in its 
diagnosis and in its treatment of disease. The mind 
does, it is universally admitted, produce disease in 
very many instances, and is all powerful to modify 
sickness in any case. Much suffering is born of the 
imagination. Every observant physician soon dis- 
covers that as much depends upon the patient's temper 
and disposition, and upon the mental atmosphere that 
surrounds him, as upon the therapeutic qualities of 
the remedies upon which he relies in his attempts at 
healing. Says Dr. Wood in one of his lectures i 1 

What physician is ignorant that violent anger may give 
rise to apoplexy? that sudden emotions, whether of joy or 
grief, may suspend for a time, if not altogether arrest, the 
action of the heart? that continued mental excitement is not 
an infrequent cause of inflammation of the brain? and mental 
depression of dyspepsia, chronic hepatitis, and various other 
forms of visceral derangement? that, finally, in the delicate 

1 Lectures and Addresses, p. 153. 



Christian Science. 115 

female, the sensitive nerves often respond in hysteria and 
convulsions to the rude touches of anxiety and vexation, 
while even the iron cords of man's constitution sometimes 
melt before the flames of love? 

Carpenter tells us that jealousy will not only vitiate 
the quality, but increase the quantity, of bile secreted. 
Murchison affirms that nervous agencies may not 
only account for functional derangement, but may 
cure even structural disease of the liver. Tuke "has 
collected many cases of epilepsy produced by anxiety, 
fear and grief ; of paralysis agitans as a result of ex- 
cessive anxiety, grief, or even joy, while a sudden 
shock, as of fear, may so disturb the motor centers as 
to develop a true paralysis." Everybody is familiar 
with cases in which fear or grief has been known to 
blanch the hair in a single night. "A succession of 
horrors, experienced in the wrecking of a train of 
cars, has cured in a few moments' time an acute ar- 
ticular rheumatism. " Hysterical patients, induced to 
believe that they had inhaled ether, have become so 
anaesthetized as to bear painful operations without 
experiencing pain. 

"Expectant attention/' says Dr. R. L. Payne, now 
of Norfolk, Va., to whose able and scholarly address 
on this subject, delivered before the North Carolina 
Medical Society, I am greatly indebted, "fixed on an 
organ with the belief that certain results will accrue 
is often sufficient to produce such results. . . . No 
organ can functionate properly if subjected to con- 
stant surveillance, and woe be to the man who forms 
the habit of daily counting his pulse, and who, on 
rising in the morning, must always carefully scruti- 
nize his tongue ; and if he but add to his armamenta- 
rium a clinical thermometer, there is sure promise of 



n6 Christian Science. 

another devotee at the crowded shrine of hypochon- 
driasis." Nausea is produced frequently by expecta- 
tion, and the man who in childhood was often dosed 
with emetics served in jelly may come to find, like 
this eminent physician, that "all jelly tastes like rhu- 
barb, and is as efficient an emetic as ipecac." Paget, 
Skey and others have recorded cases of "hysterical 
joint" almost indistinguishable from the true disease. 
The bloody sweat of our Lord in Gethsemane, deemed 
miraculous, possibly, by his immediate followers, is 
now scientifically accounted for as the physical result 
of intense spiritual agony ; and the well-attested cases 
of Louise Lateau and of Marie de Moerl show con- 
clusively that the phenomenon of stigmatization, first 
said to have been witnessed in the case of St. Francis 
of Assisi, in which the bleeding wounds of Christ 
seem to be reproduced on the person of the ecstatic, 
may be induced by the contemplation of vivid mental 
pictures of our Lord's dying agonies. 

Again, without pausing to note the many curious 
facts adduced by phrenologists in support of their 
pretended science, the facts of physiognomy speak 
for themselves, and furnish what seems to be strong 
argument in favor of the doctrine that all disease 
originates in the mind and may be cured by the mind. 
The maiden's blush may spring from wounded mod- 
esty, from anger, surprise, love, or embarrassment. 
Character and passing thought alike make report of 
themselves through the features of the human face. 
Vice glasses the eye and thickens the complexion, 
while purity of character imparts clearness to the 
countenance and a gleam of truth and sincerity to the 
eye. Truth and falsehood, intellect and stupidity, all 
hang out their signals in the human visage. Tenny- 



Christian Science. 117 

son execrates the "gold which gilds the straitened 
forehead of the fool ;" and who but knows at sight 
the beaming face and sparkling eye of joy, the quiz- 
zical look and merry glance of wit, the scarlet flame 
or death-like pallor of rage, the frosty gleam and up- 
turned nose of pride or scorn, the compressed lip of 
avarice, the square jaw and firm mouth of determina- 
tion, the open face of honest good-will, the drawn 
features and dull eye of pain, grief and despondency, 
the attractive mien of humility, or the hang-dog coun- 
tenance of conscious guilt? Beyond all question, the 
soul is in some sense a chambered nautilus, building 
its own shell. 

Add to all this the well-known vis medicatrix 
naturae, the tendency of nature to heal. Broken bones 
knit themselves together, and need only to be prop- 
erly adjusted, as Mrs. Eddy advises, in order to in- 
sure a proper recovery. The bloody gash in the 
flesh needs only to have its edges sewed together, and 
to be kept cool and clean, in order to insure quick 
healing. Antiseptics do not aid in the healing pro- 
cess, but are useful simply in killing the germs which 
might produce inflammation. Hemorrhage is conser- 
vative, and many persons are known to have recov- 
ered spontaneously from true pulmonary consump- 
tion. The dissecting room has often afforded evi- 
dence of this fact when it was probable that the sub- 
ject himself had never in life realized that he was a 
sufferer from that dreaded scourge of humanity. 
Colds and fevers, mumps and measles, and a host of 
minor maladies, run their course and need little medi- 
cation, unless the system has been previously disor- 
dered, or the type of the disease is especially virulent. 

Physicians who have attempted to practice the 



n8 Christian Science. 

healing art without the use of medicines have some- 
times achieved marvelous success. Usually some de- 
vice has been employed, and certain manipulations 
performed, in order to inspire confidence, while some- 
times supposititious medicines, such as bread pills, 
have been administered after the patient had been 
induced to believe they would be effective. The suc- 
cess of Dr. Perkins, with his metallic tractors, is well 
known, and admitted by the whole medical fraternity. 
He was particularly successful in the treatment of 
rheumatism, curing stiff ankles, knees, wrists and 
hips, and this even when the patients had long been 
ill and the diseased joints had become much swollen. 
He cured one case of lockjaw in which the rigor had 
lasted four days, and the attending physicians had 
lost all hope. The effects of the tractors were at first 
attributed to galvanism, but it was discovered that 
the same results followed the use of wooden tractors 
painted so as to resemble the metal ones. 

The case of the paralytic cured by Sir Humphrey 
Davy by means of a clinical thermometer is famous. 
Desiring to take his temperature, Sir Humphrey 
placed a thermometer under the patient's tongue. 
Thereupon he professed himself better, and asked 
that he be allowed to keep it there, and Sir Humphrey 
consented. From that hour the sick man improved 
steadily, and was soon well, having meantime used no 
other remedv. 

Dr. Buckley, whose volume on Faith Healing, 
Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena is rich in 
information on this phase of our subject, states that 
he has frequently relieved the pain in ulcerated teeth 
by applying to the gums a silver dollar wrapped in 
silk, the patient being led to suppose it an infallible 



Christian Science. 119 

remedy. The application was useless when the patient 
had been informed that there was no efficacy in the 
silver dollar itself. He relates also how a well-known 
public singer was relieved of great nausea and intense 
headache by two applications of the silver dollar, and 
was then able to perform a full programme with his 
usual energy. 

Another experiment of the doctor is interesting, 
and shows that, had he chosen, he might have become 
a worthy successor to the famous Dr. Perkins. Be- 
ing detained at a ferry, he went into a house and 
found there a woman afflicted with rheumatism in her 
hand. Her fingers were very much swollen, and she 
had been unable to move them for two weeks. Call- 
ing for a pair of knitting needles, he held them 
"about two inches from the end of the woman's fing- 
ers, just above the clenched hand, and said, 'Now, 
madame, do not think of your fingers, and, above all, 
do not try to move them, but fix your eyes on the 
ends of those needles/ " She did so, and "to her own 
wonder and that of her daughter, the fingers straight- 
ened out and became flexible without the least pain/' 
He then moved the needles about over the hand, and 
"she declared that all pain left her hand, except in one 
spot about half an inch in diameter/' 

The late Dr. Krackowitzer, of New York, was called 
to see a young lady who had been ill for a long time, 
suffering intense pain and unable to move. Her 
former physician had advised a severe operation, in- 
volving deep and painful incisions. The surgeon had 
come three times to perform the operation, but the 
parents had shrunk from the ordeal. At last Dr. 
Krackowitzer was called, and after thoroughly exam- 
ining the patient, he exclaimed suddenly, in a tone of 



120 Christian Science. 

-command, "Get out of bed, put on your clothes, and 
go down stairs to meet your mother in the parlor!" 
She arose at once and obeyed him, took a walk with 
her mother next day, and soon recovered. This was 
a case which would have given Airs. Eddy a golden 
opportunity, and would probably have gained con- 
verts for her new Christianity. Dr. Krackowitzer had 
recognized it as a case of obstinate hysteria, in which 
the patient required the stimulus of "sudden com- 
mand from a will stronger than her own." 

Another case reported to Dr. Buckley by an emi- 
nent physician was that of a lady who had been suf- 
fering for months with rheumatism. Her physician, 
having done everything else he could think of, at last 
concluded to give her a vapor bath. Having ex- 
temporized an apparatus out of the tea-kettle and 
some old tin pipe, he introduced the pipe into the 
bed and instructed the servant to fill the kettle half 
full. She, however, exceeded her instructions, and 
filled the kettle so that the steam forced the scald- 
ing water up through the pipe into the bed. The 
instant it reached the body of the patient she jumped 
out of bed with a shriek, crying, "Doctor, you have 
scalded me!" Her rheumatism left her that instant, 
and did not return. 

Two cases of cures resulting from shock came to 
the writer's knowledge. Mrs. John H. Hughes, of 
Cedar Grove, X. C, was at the time of the Charleston 
earthquake suffering and almost bed-ridden with 
rheumatism. She was greatly alarmed by the earth- 
quake shocks, and her rheumatism left her that hour, 
and did not return for six months. A Mrs. Sullivan, 
of Shelby, X. C, h&d been bed-ridden with paralysis, 
as was supposed, for seven years, when one dav some 



Christian Science. 121 

one informed her that a cyclone was coming. There- 
upon she jumped out of bed, ran up stairs, and after 
recovering from her fright, found her paralysis gone. 
It was due to hypochondria, and returned after some 
years. When I knew her she was again bed-ridden, 
and continued so during the whole time of my pas- 
torate in that place. 

Dr. , of Wilmington, N. C, cured a lady 

of hysterical cough by bringing "railing accusations" 
against her until she was made furious by what she 
considered his insults. I had the story from her hus- 
band, who related it with great glee. It is, perhaps, 
not to be wondered at that this lady, though not a 
follower of Mrs. Eddy, is now a devout believer in 
mental science healing. 

During the siege of Breda in 1625 scurvy prevailed 
in the army of the Prince of Orange to such an ex- 
tent that he was about to capitulate. In their despera- 
tion the following experiment was resorted to by the 
physicians : Three small vials of medicine were dis- 
tributed to each physician, not enough for the cure of 
two patients. "It was publicly given out that three 
or four drops were sufficient to impart a healing vir- 
tue to a gallon of liquor/' Dr. Frederick Van Der 
Mye, one of the physicians concerned in the experi- 
ment, says that the effect of the delusion was aston- 
ishing. "Many quickly and perfectly recovered. 
Such as had not moved their limbs for a month be- 
fore were seen walking in the streets, sound, upright, 
and in perfect health." Before this fortunate experi- 
ment they had been, he tells us, in a state of despair, 
and the scurvy and their despair had brought about 
"fluxes, dropsies, and every species of distress, at- 
tended with a great mortality." 



122 Christian Science. 

The cases of rheumatic patients who were cured, 
one by being accidentally scalded, a second by suffer- 
ing the shock of a railroad collision, and a third by 
the Charleston earthquake, are in the same category 
with the cases of consumption referred to by Van 
Swieten and Smollet, which were cured by falling 
into cold water. 

The late Dr. Buzzell, of Norfolk, Ya., during the 
cholera epidemic of 1832, was summoned to the bed- 
side of a stalwart negro who was in a state of col- 
lapse from the dread disease. "Instead of beginning 
at once to treat him, he accused him of shamming, 
denounced and derided him in every possible way," 
and then, feigning intense anger, "procured a switch 
and began to thrash" him severely. The more the 
negro groaned and protested that he was dying, the 
more vigorously the doctor plied his switch, and thus 
succeeded in bringing about a tremendous reaction, 
and the negro recovered. Dr. Hunter McGuire, of 
Richmond, Va., is said to have cured a case of neuras- 
thenia by having the nurses administer to the patient 
a number of chastisements with rubber rods. The 
patient, a young lady, had been disinclined to all ex- 
ertion, and unable to take interest in anything; but 
the towering passion caused by the doctor's treat- 
ment roused her energy, and she returned home 
cured. 

Less severe was the method formerly, if not to this 
day, pursued by the Oneida communists as related to 
Dr. Buckley by a sister of John H. Noyes, the founder 
of the sect. That was treatment by criticism. When 
one of their number was taken ill a committee was 
appointed to visit the patient, who entered the room, 
sat down, and without paying any attention to the 



Christian Science. 123 

patient, proceeded to speak of his or her peculiarities, 
bringing every fault to the surface with unsparing 
condemnation. It was claimed that an epidemic of 
diphtheria was fought in this way, and not a case 
died. The irritation produced by this caustic treat- 
ment was said to be such that an hour's experience of 
the ordeal caused the patient to perspire freely, and 
rapid recovery followed. 

Dr. James R. Cocke, in his work on Hypnotism, 
says he has known an athlete who had been paralyzed 
a year to be restored to health by "simple sugges- 
tion" and a little ridicule. "A friend laughed at him, 
and told him he could walk if he would. He tried it, 
and he did." 

Glancing over these numerous cases, it will be seen 
that all the mental causes operating to bring about 
recovery from diseases may be summed up in three 
general classes: 1, Mental expectation, induced either 
by faith or suggestion ; 2, Shock, as of accident, fright, 
vehement command given unexpectedly, etc. ; 3, Vio- 
lent anger, or violent emotion of any sort, which pow- 
erfully diverts the attention of the patient from his 
condition. Christian Science practice, as we shall 
see, is well adapted to bring all these factors into 
play. 

In addition to these natural causes, which may ac- 
count for recovery, we must also consider the wide 
field of coincidence. Thus, if a dyspeptic patient 
is reading Mrs. Eddy's book, after having eaten im- 
prudently, he will find himself somewhat nau- 
seated. Just at that moment he reads or remembers 
the paragraph in which Mrs. Eddy assures her read- 
ers that if their symptoms seem to be aggravated 
while reading her book this is itself a favorable sign, 



124 Christian Science. 

and only the "chemicalization," or ferment, caused 
by the sacred truth of her volume as it is being assim- 
ilated. Having no appetite for his next meal, he fasts, 
and next day, as a matter of course, his stomach, hav- 
ing been permitted to rest, gives evidence of no un- 
pleasant symptoms, and he leaps to the joyful con- 
clusion that he is being cured ! This conclusion is it- 
self, as we have seen, a very helpful thing, aiding 
nature to correct tendencies toward diseased condi- 
tions. The patient of bilious or dyspeptic habits is, 
perhaps more than any other, dependent upon en- 
couragement and mental expectation, because of the 
sympathy between the brain and the digestive system ; 
and this being the case, we need not be surprised that 
patients testify that they have been healed of "chronic 
hepatitis" simply by reading Science and Health. So, 
also, persons recovering from disease under the treat- 
ment of regular physicians may be placed under the 
care of "Scientists," and their subsequent improve- 
ment is attributed to the skill of the "Science healer" 
instead of to the skill of the physician, whose medi- 
cines have relieved organic lesion or functional dis- 
order. And in all the minor. maladies which require 
little treatment, mental healers have an easy victory, 
and gain laurels without risk. 

It is undoubtedly true, moreover, that many pa- 
tients are benefited by being allowed to do without 
medicines. Their systems have been irritated or de- 
pleted by drastic remedies until the best cure is to let 
them alone. It is often the case that little children 
are killed by improper medication. Dr. Paris de- 
clared long ago that "the file of every apothecary 
would furnish a volume of instances in which the 
ingredients of the prescription were fighting to- 



Christian Science. 125 

gether in the dark." And what is true of adults is, 
of necessity, more true of children, who cannot relate 
their own symptoms so as to aid the physician in 
his diagnosis. Adults, too, frequently exaggerate 
their symptoms, and medicines stronger than neces- 
sary are administered. Add the fact of empiricism 
on the part of practitioners who are seeking to intro- 
duce new remedies, and the wonder is that so many 
who are seriously ill do recover. 

Nor can we overestimate the therapeutic value of 
the freedom allowed to patients under the treatment 
of mental healers in respect of air, exercise and diet. 
They are relieved of anxiety, assured that recovery 
will be speedy, required to think and talk about other 
things than their maladies, and encouraged to eat, 
drink and sleep, and to attend to their business as if 
they were well. This sort of treatment is precisely 
what is needed in many cases of chronic invalidism to 
induce the "resumption of customary health." 

The weight of all these considerations is such as to 
compel a careful reasoner to return the Scotch ver- 
dict of "not proven" when examining into Christian 
Science miracles, no matter how many Mother Eddy 
and her children may be able to report. Another 
class of facts will now be discussed which tend to 
throw some light on certain mysterious procedures of 
mental healers, and may account in part for their suc- 
cess. 



IX. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HYPNOTISM. 

One peculiarity of Mrs. Eddy's system seems to be 
its pronounced opposition to hypnotism. In her pub- 
lic addresses she has been wont to warn her follow- 
ers against this "pernicious error/' and in her book 
she devotes a whole chapter to animal magnetism, 
pronouncing it a "criminal misuse of mortal mind," 
"mental crime," etc. "The hypnotizer employs one 
belief to destroy another," she says ; "and if he heals a 
sickness, and a belief originally caused the sickness, 
it is a case of the greater error overcoming the lesser. 
This greater error thereafter occupies the ground, 
leaving the case worse than before it was grasped by 
the stronger error." Practical people, however, can 
see little, if any, difference between the hypnotic 
method as thus very correctly described by her and 
the method which she herself so laboriously teaches. 
She tells her patient his sickness is unreal, and when 
the patient is fully convinced that such is the case he 
is cured, according to her doctrine. So, also, does the 
hypnotist proceed. He suggests to his patient, after 
hypnotizing him, that he is now well, and in many 
cases the results are quite as favorable as those 
claimed for Christian Science cures. 

In a former generation hypnotism was invested 
with great mystery. It was called "animal magnet- 
ism," and it was supposed that some subtle influence 
was transmitted from the operator to his subjects. 



Christian Science. 127 

The experiments of Dr. Buckley, however, and of 
many others have demonstrated that there is needed 
no exercise of will-power on the part of the operator, 
and that, in fact, many persons will fall into hypnotic 
sleep and become subject to suggestion when there 
has been absolutely nothing done to induce the hyp- 
notic condition. Dr. Buckley relates an experiment 
performed by himself in which eight gentlemen and 
ladies were requested to rise, stand without personal 
contact with one another or with him, clasp their 
hands and close their eyes for a few minutes. In a 
little while five passed more or less into the trance 
state, two becoming unconscious of their surround- 
ings, and the others exhibiting peculiar phenomena. 
A lady was made to believe that she was writing a 
letter, and simulated the act by motions in the air. 
A young man was told that an envelope placed on his 
head weighed a ton, and his legs trembled under the 
tremendous burden. A prominent lawyer believed 
himself sitting on a log looking into the muddy bot- 
tom of a creek. Speaking of a young man who, in 
one of his exhibitions, passed into such a perfect state 
of trance, according to the village editor, that he was 
"clairvoyant, ecstatic, mesmeric, somnambulistic, and, 
in fact, took any form of ideomania at will/' Dr. 
Buckley expresses the opinion that a word would 
have sent him back to sleep, and that if he had been 
suffering from any of the diseases which faith-healers 
could have relieved he would have received equal help. 
We see also that he would have been a good subject 
for a Christian Science practitioner. 

Dr. Cocke has given reports of a large number of 
cases treated by himself through hypnotism. They 
include cases of rheumatism, ulnar neuritis, paralysis, 



128 Christian Science. 

irritable or traumatic spine, nervous cough, hysteria, 
vomiting, neuralgia, neurasthenia, and dipsomania. 
He enumerates also sundry cases in which pain was 
greatly relieved, one of them being that of a man who 
had an ulcer on the brain, from which he finally died, 
but was relieved of pain by hypnotism to such an ex- 
tent that he passed the last months of his life in com- 
parative ease. He reports a number of cases in which 
surgical operations were performed upon persons 
who were hypnotized instead of being put under the 
influence of ether. He mentions cures effected by 
hypnotism of persons addicted to the morphine, co- 
caine, and tobacco habits. "Moral resistance," he 
remarks, "is the element of hope in all these cases. 
Sometimes it can be aroused by hypnotic suggestion 
when all other means fail. Because of this, and for 
the sake of a wider experience, I plead earnestly for 
a more extended trial of it.'' 

Mrs. Eddy attributes all diseases to "self-mesmeri- 
zation." Drs. Cocke, Buckley and other writers on 
the subject agree that there is such a phenomenon as 
auto-hypnotism. By concentrating their attention 
upon some bright object, such as a coin, a bed of coals, 
or smooth running water, many persons may induce 
in themselves a trance sleep, in which they will see 
visions, or imagine many such things as they might 
be led to imagine at the suggestion of another. Dr. 
Cocke declares his conviction that many persons who 
are thought to be suffering from delusional insanity 
are simply in a state of auto-hypnotism. 

The modus operandi of hypnotic practitioners is 
worthy of note as throwing not a little light on the 
methods pursued by Mrs. Eddy and other mental 
healers. The practitioner will put the hand of the pa- 






Christian Science. 129 

tient, if he finds him asleep, into cold water, or in 
some way apply cold water to his body, and then be- 
gin making suggestions. This method may be pur- 
sued in some cases when the patient is awake. A Mr. 
, of Buffalo Lithia Springs, Virginia, was hyp- 
notized by Dr. Hodges, of Richmond, at the instance 
of Dr. E. C. Laird, who found him suffering from a 
nausea that was intractable by the ordinary remedies. 
Dr. Hodges simply wet his hand and placed it on the 
patient's stomach, and after a short interval, said, 
"You feel better now ! Your nausea is leaving you !" 
The nausea left him that moment, and did not 
return. 

Ordinarily, the hypnotist will ask his subject to 
look steadily at a coin, a revolving disk, or some 
other bright object, and concentrate his attention 
upon that for a few moments. In a little while the 
sensitive subject will begin to breathe heavily, and 
will almost immediately fall into sleep more or less 
profound. In this state he will be completely subject 
to the will of the operator, and may be induced to be- 
lieve that water is whiskey, that he is drunk, etc., and 
will, at the bidding of the operator, do many absurd 
things. While in this state it is suggested to him that 
on awaking he will find himself relieved of his dis- 
ease, and in many cases, as has been shown, the result 
will be a cure more or less perfect. Many people are 
so liable to lapse into this state that a word will 
send them to sleep after one or two experiences. 
Many hypnotists only require their subjects to look 
them steadily in the face. This accomplishes the 
same end as would be attained by requiring them to 
look at a "magic crystal," such as was used by some 
of the earlier mesmerists. The only prerequisite, ac- 



130 Christian Science. 

cording to Dr. Cocke, is voluntary obedience on the 
part of the subject for a few minutes. When this 
obedience has been yielded, and the hypnotic state 
induced, the results are marvelous. 

Beings which are children wholly of his imagination will 
exist for him as conscious entities. His personality may be 
changed, and he will for the time think, act and live another 
man. The various faculties of the mind may be, each in their 
turn, rendered abnormally acute. The speech centres may 
act in such a way that the man who has naturally a poor com- 
mand of language will, when hypnotized, converse volubly, 
or deliver an address, speaking fluently. The emotions may 
be played upon by suggestions, like an instrument of music 
by a master's hand. Joy, sorrow, grief, despair, may be made 
to follow each other and appear in combination with mar- 
velous rapidity. The man may be made to believe that he is 
a broomstick, a pitcher, chair or carpet, or any other inani- 
mate thing, and to act his part with wonderful skill. — J. R. 
Cocke, M. D., Hypnotism. 

Andrew Wilson, M. D., in a very interesting paper 

on "Some By-Ways of the Brain," in Harper's Mag- 
azine for May, 1898, takes the ground that the phe- 
nomena of hypnotism, however mysterious they may 
be considered as yet, are to be explained upon the 
same principles as the phenomena of somnambulism, 
mental abstraction and the like. "Things cease to be 
wonderful/' he remarks, "when you can find parallels 
for them ; and when we see in hypnotism merely a 
further expression of the brain by-way which has led 
us through sleep and dreams to sleep-walking, we 
have allocated it to its true position in the series of 
mental phenomena of which it forms a part. Hypnot- 
ism, indeed, has been well styled 'artificially induced 
somnambulism,' for the phenomena of the one state 



Christian Science. 131 

aie analogous to those of the other, and the actions 
performed by the sleep-walker run parallel to those 
which we can induce at will in the mesmeric subject. 
That which we do effect in hypnotism is essentially 
the inhibition of the upper brain. We switch off the 
cerebrum temporarily from its command of the body 
and allow the central ganglia, under the influence of 
suggestion, to come to the front in the mental life of 
the individual." 

The persons who are good subjects for hypnotic 
experiments, it is said, are generally excitable, imagi- 
nary, and credulous persons. Men and women of 
small imagination, free from any tendency toward 
superstitious vagaries, are not, as a rule, susceptible 
to hypnosis. Here, however, extremes meet. Many 
sensible, unimaginative, practical men and women, 
who are disposed to be incredulous, will run to the 
opposite extreme as soon as they see something which 
they cannot explain, and hence become ready subjects, 
either for the charlatanism of the hypnotist or the pal- 
pable humbuggery of the Christian Scientist. In all 
cases their credulity is the result of their ignorance, 
and a temporary, stubborn incredulity is sometimes 
more favorable to sudden effects than the stupid, ac- 
quiescent credulity of others who are not so hard to 
convince, and can be more readily undeceived. 

These facts, in connection with others previously 
noted, are sufficient to explain the alleged powers of 
mental healers. The treatment given by Christian 
Scientists, as we shall see, is always solitary. This 
gives abundant opportunity for hypnotizing without 
danger of discovery. All the conditions of hypnotic 
results are present. The mysterious silence of the 
healer is well adapted to induce in sensitive patients 



132 Christian Science. 

the highest degree of hypnotic passivity. The 
"spoken argument" or vehement command is but hyp- 
notic suggestion under another name. "Christian 
Science," says Mrs. Josephine Curtis Woodbury in 
a letter to the writer, "is built on the law of sugges- 
tion." Voluntary obedience on the part of the patient 
is yielded from the first moment of treatment. A 
complete surrender is induced by the reports that may 
have come to hand of the healer's mysterious powers 
and miraculous cures, and this confidence, already 
grown into a feeling of veneration, is further in- 
creased by the healer's hints as to thought transfer- 
ence. The patient, having been isolated from all un- 
believers in this new method of miracle-working, is 
assured that the thought of his physician is in itself 
a healing panacea, which is communicated irresistibly, 
being a force of such potency that it may be sent 
round the globe at will. Hence, aside from the power 
of encouragement and vivid mental expectation, we 
have the patient in a condition of mind which makes 
him as clay in the hands of the potter. Tf dominated 
by a fixed idea of disease which has no real basis in 
organic lesions or in unsanitary habits, the healer's 
suggestions may quickly remove that idea and re- 
place it with another conviction that a real and per- 
manent cure has been effected. 

Xor is this all. The power of suggestion, as has 
been seen, applies to numerous other things besides 
healing. The hypnotized subject will obey the sug- 
gestions of the hypnotizer even after awaking from 
the hypnotic sleep. To what extent this control of 
the patient's mind may go is not yet fully ascertained. 
( rifts and fees may be obtained without doubt through 
this medium of suggestion. Mrs. Eddy's violent de- 



Christian Science. 133 

nunciations of "malicious animal magnetism" are, in 
view of all the facts, as suspicious as the cry of 
"Stop, thief!" when raised by a certain class under 
certain circumstances. Much of the instruction in 
her lectures and in the Christian Science Journal con- 
sists in explaining this "fashionable and lucrative 
vice." The charge of occultism, brought against all 
non-conformists in Christian Science healing by Mrs. 
Eddy and her followers, comes with ill-grace from 
those who have adopted as one of the fundamental 
principles of their healing art the idea that the heal- 
er's thought may be transferred to the patient. If 
healing thought, why not any other? There is, in 
view of this fact, profound significance in the follow- 
ing criticism of Evans' Esoteric Christianity, pub- 
lished in the Christian Science Journal of August, 
ii 



If good will to man is the motive of Dr. Evans' book, why 
does he withhold from the world the manner in which he 
protects himself from the mental suggestions of others? He 
virtually owns that if the head of an institution, a faith-curer, 
be a magnetizer, he can quietly and secretly address persons 
through thought suggestions, thus inducing them to furnish 
money for his particular institution. These mental sugges- 
tions can reach persons near or remote, and affect them to 
frenzy until the transferred thoughts are put into action. 
Later the victim is made happy by a letter from the doctor 
acknowledging the money as a special dispensation from God 
in answer to prayer. 

I introduce this as a sample of the sort of supersti- 
tion which is fostered by Christian Science, as well 
as to show that there is ground for suspicion that 
hypnotic influence may be attempted by Science heal- 
ers for selfish ends. If the "thought suggestion" fails, 



134 Christian Science. 

as it certainly will, what is more natural than sugges- 
tion of a more direct and immediate character ? Chris- 
tian Scientists may not be any worse than they sus- 
pect faith-healers or "Esoteric Christians" to be, — 

"But Och ! mankind are unco weak, 
An' little to be trusted ; 
If self the wavering balance shake, 
It's rarely right adjusted." 

How much Mrs. Eddy has profited by her studies 
of hypnotism may be inferred from her reference to 
the subject in one of her circular arguments : 

We rarely remember tbat we govern our own bodies. The 
social error of mesmerism, or hypnotism, . . . illus- 
trates the fact just cited. The operator makes his subjects 
believe that they cannot move a certain part of the body 
. . . and they cannot, until at last their belief is better 
instructed and emancipated by understanding, which masters 
both belief and fear. — Science and Health, p. 401. 

The inference here is plain ; but in the next para- 
graph we have it stated clearly. The hypnotist em- 
ploys "mortal mind" either to produce or to relieve 
the illusion ; but, argues our oracle, all illusions 
"should be healed by immortal Mind," which simply 
means by suggestions after Mrs. Eddy's method. In 
other words, the hypnotic practices of Christian 
Science healers are legitimate, because, forsooth, they 
do not rely upon "mortal mind," but upon "immortal 
Mind I" Xot only so, but Christian Scientists are ren- 
dering a great favor to suffering humanity by means 
of their peculiar style of hypnotic practice. 

Mortal mind is constantly producing on mortal body the 
results of false opinions, and it will continue to do so until 
this belief is deprived of its imaginary power by Truth, which 
sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion. — pp. 401 -2. 



Christian Science. 135 

In order toheal through immortal Mind, it is neces- 
sary to fix truth in your patient's thought. To do 
this you must explain Christian Science to them. 
This will include instruction as to the power which 
illusion exercises over their bodies. Hence it is neces- 
sary to "destroy the patient's unfortunate belief by 
both silently and audibly arguing the opposite facts 
in regard to harmonious Being/' "If delusion says, 
I have lost my memory, you must contradict it," and 
so of every disease and every infirmity. "You sen- 
tence yourself to suffer" is the omnipotent suggestion 
upon which Mrs. Eddy relies. Thus it is evident 
that, apart from any mysterious proceedings, the 
power of Christian Science is due largely to the influ- 
ence of repeated suggestions. "You are better," "you 
are well," says the healer, and the sensitive patient is 
likely to respond if the disease be not one in which 
organic deterioration has gone too far. 

Nor is there in all this anything mysterious and 
occult. Suggestion is, perhaps, the most powerful 
means of influencing human thought and conduct of 
which we have any knowledge. Military command- 
ers issue orders and require obedience. Parents who 
are wanting in tact can rule only by force. The 
sand-lot orator, persuaded of the justice of his cause, 
thinks to gain his ends by personal abuse. The un- 
skilful teacher hopes to rule his pupils by holding the 
rod or ferrule in terrorem over their heads. The un- 
wise pastor, planning some useful work, frets because 
his people do not see things as he does, and crying, 
"Thus saith the Lord !" tries to drive his flock for- 
ward on the path he would have them pursue. But, 
while military commanders must rule sternly, and 
there can be no successful campaign where there is 



136 Christian Science. 

not rigorous discipline, it is evident that parents, 
orators, teachers, pastors — all who would rule young 
or old for their good through their rational natures — 
must shape their methods so as to take advantage of 
the laws of mind. One of these laws is the associa- 
tion of ideas. By opportune suggestion a thought 
of hope or of duty may be so associated with 
the thing in view as to become a motive, swaying the 
will. Save in exceptional cases, parents may control 
their children by making them control themselves, 
and they can do this by wise and timely suggestion. 
The skilful teacher learns to make his pupils think for 
themselves, and by bringing their mental and moral 
faculties into play, he rules them so wisely that they 
do not realize how strict his discipline is. The true 
orator soon learns that the passion which he represses 
in his public discourses affects his audience even more 
than his most vehement and passionate utterance ; 
that he is best able to sway a multitude and make 
them think as he wills when he attains most complete 
self-mastery; and that, far beyond the power of the 
thoughts which he pours out, is the power of those 
thoughts which he has suggested. The most suc- 
cessful pastor is not always the man of most intense 
spiritual force, but the man who has learned how to 
suggest the thing to be done, and to make the sug- 
gestion at the right time. 

The power of suggestion is the might of gentle- 
ness. Its leaven is the leaven of thought. Open ob- 
scenity is repulsive and disgusting ; but impure sug- 
gestions, cloaked in double entendre, are strong 
agents of the evil one. What we call the power of 
example is only the suggestive force of righteous- 
ness ; not so much what a man savs and does as the 



Christian Science. 137 

impression which his presence and his speech make 
as to the moral principles which guide him. Sociolo- 
gists are now beginning to account for epidemics of 
crime on this principle of suggestion ; and there are 
many who believe that a sensational press ought to be 
curbed by the strong hand of the law, and prevented 
from publishing the minutiae of every crime and 6i 
every scandal. A recent illustration was afforded in 
the murder of a woman in New York by means of 
poison sent to the house in a bottle of bromo seltzer. 
The New York and London press published the de- 
tails of the crime, and within a few days a somewhat 
similar murder occurred in London. Some years ago 
accounts of the crimes of "Jack the Ripper/' com- 
mitted in London, were published on this side of the 
ocean, and not long afterward there were similar mur- 
ders, accompanied by horrible mutilation, committed 
in New T York. The pictures of the "bold, bad life" 
led by burglars and outlaws in books like The Life 
of Jesse James have been known to lead young boys 
to organize themselves into bands of burglars. The 
devil himself used the power of suggestion in the 
first temptation, and his children have learned from 
their father through all the ages. 

Whether used for good or for evil, then, the power 
of suggestion is incalculable. And this power is made 
almost omnipotent when one soul surrenders itself to 
another. Hypnotic passivity results, as we have seen, 
from voluntary obedience. The mental powers are 
freed from the restraint of the will, and the mind is 
like a boat w T hose pilot has deserted it, leaving the 
wheel in the hands of another. Suggestion is the 
turning of the wdieel when the engines are already at 
work and the screws revolving. Christian Science 



138 Christian Science. 

patients are passive in much the same way. Sur- 
rendering themselves to the healer, they listen pa- 
tiently to his instructions, obey his directions, even 
try to think as he directs, and thus prepare them- 
selves to be dominated by the thought which it 
is his effort to fix in their minds. This thought, 
repeated in endless reiterations, is, " I am not sick, 
and cannot be, because Mind cannot be sick, and 
there is nothing in the universe but Mind and its 
idea." Uttered in willing ears, it may soon assume 
the power of a "fixed idea," ruling the after-life of 
the patient until some mental or physical shock shall 
rudelv rid him of his insane delusion. 



X. 

THE MIRACLES OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

It is to be regretted that in her books Mrs. Eddy 
has not given more cases of healing, accompanied by 
references to persons other than the alleged sufferers. 
As an excuse for not doing this she pleads that she 
"never believed in receiving certificates. " The pub- 
lic, however, cannot be satisfied with such an excuse, 
especially in view of the fact that Mrs. Eddy does give 
some certificates, and even publishes a letter from one 
who was healed of "bronchitis, dyspepsia, gastralgia 
and gastritis, etc.," as an appendix to her one hun- 
dredth edition of Science and Health. The possibili- 
ties of faulty diagnosis are such, even when compe- 
tent physicians are employed, that patients may be 
very much in error as to the nature and status of their 
maladies, and it is undoubtedly true that enthusiastic 
healers of any sect are liable to overestimate the mag- 
nitude of the danger from which their patients have 
been rescued. 

But, without pressing this point, let us examine 
the cases reported by Mrs. Eddy as having been 
healed by herself. 

One is astounded to find in Science and Health the 
statement that Mrs. Eddy "never made a specialty of 
healing disease," although she asserts, with great 
modesty, that healing has accompanied all her efforts 
to introduce Christian Science. Mrs. Woodbury 
affirms that Mrs. Eddy usually referred applicants for 



140 Christian Science. 

help to her students, and that "if students failed to 
cure, it was because of their weakness." Their leader 
"never failed/' Evidently Mrs. Eddy was prudent 
enough to rest on her laurels after having started her 
new crusade. It is possible that prudence, not less 
than preoccupation, may have dictated the notice 
which has appeared in Science and Health in all its 
multitudinous editions, "The author takes no patients, 
and declines medical consultation/' And yet the as- 
sertions and intimations of her ability to heal, should 
she choose to exercise her powers, are many in all 
her publications. 

In Unity of Good Mrs. Eddy makes the state- 
ment, "as due both to Christian Science and her- 
self," that she has been enabled to heal instantly a 
cancer that had eaten its way to the jugular vein. The 
fact that in sundry other less marvelous cases she has 
given references makes it somewhat significant that 
in this miraculous case she gives none whatever, 
and does not even tell us where nor when the miracle 
was wrought. Is she sure it was a cancer? What 
evidence have we, beside her own unsupported state- 
ment, to show either that it was a cancer, or that she 
healed it? 

On page 86 of Science and Health, to "elucidate 
her topic," she gives a certificate from James Ingham, 
East Stoughton, Mass. Mr. Ingham testifies that he 
was suffering from "pulmonary difficulties, pains in 
the chest, a hard and unremitting cough, hectic 
fever," all which unpleasant symptoms disappeared 
in a short time under Mrs. Eddy's treatment. Now, 
it is a well-known fact that such symptoms frequently 
appear when there is no lesion in the lungs. Further, 
as to whether Mr. Ingham really had consumption, 



Christian Science. 141 

or only thought himself afflicted with "pulmonary 
difficulties/' the reader is entitled to something more 
than the patient's diagnosis of his own case, even 
though that be supported by Mrs. Eddy. The patient 
may have been mistaken as to the serious character of 
his symptoms, and Mrs. Eddy is an interested wit- 
ness. 

On page yj she tells of a lady whom she "cured of 
consumption," and who, prior to her treatment of the 
case, was unable to breathe freely when the wind blew 
from the east. "I sat by her side a few moments," 
says Mother Mary; "her breath came gently. The 
inspirations were deep and natural. I then requested 
her to look at the weather-vane. The wind had not 
changed, but her difficult breathing had gone. My 
metaphysical treatment changed the action of her be- 
lief upon her system, and she never suffered again 
from east winds." Here the facts related point clearly 
to a case of hysteria. It is no unusual thing for hys- 
terical patients to imagine that they have consump- 
tion, and during the period in which they cherish 
this fancy they suffer apparently from many of the 
symptoms of consumption. But granting, for the 
sake of argument, that it was a genuine case of con- 
sumption, it does not follow that her recovery was 
due to Mrs. Eddy's "metaphysical treatment," al- 
though it is also possible that this may have aided 
somewhat in the recovery. A change of diet, as we 
have seen, with recovery from despondency, which 
might have been induced by any treatment in which 
she had faith, was sufficient to have produced the 
same results ; or there may have been some acci- 
dental wetting, like that in the case reported by Smol- 
lett, which was cured by falling into water. Still 



142 



Christian Science. 



further, the name and residence of the lady are not 
given. Are we to attribute this, in blind credulity, to 
Mrs. Eddy's want of belief in receiving certificates? 
How are we to believe her for her works' sake when 
she refuses to give us proof of her w T orks? 

Again, on page 87, she gives an account of a case 
of "enteritis, following typhoid fever/' which she 
cured. The patient, Miss Pillsbury, had been given 
up by the regular physicians, and was lying at the 
point of death. Airs. Baker, who, it is presumed, is 
a relative of Mrs. Alary Baker Glover Eddy, as also 
of the patient, Miss Pillsbury, certifies that Mrs. 
. Eddy (then Mrs. Glover) entered the room and stood 
— it may be supposed silently — by the bed-side. Very 
soon Miss Pillsbury recognized her, and said, "I am 
glad to see you. Aunty." Ten minutes later Mrs. 
Eddy bade her rise and walk, which she did, walking 
seven times around the room, and then taking her seat 
in a chair. For two weeks previous all who had 
entered the room had been obliged to step lightly, 
because the patient's bowels were so tender she could 
feel the slightest jar. Now, however, she was com- 
manded by Mrs. Eddy to stamp her foot strongly 
upon the floor, and she did so without suffering any 
pain. The next day she came down to the table, 
and the third day took a railway journey, etc. Here 
it is to be noted, 1. That the patient had been under 
treatment. 2. That Mrs. Eddy stood, it is presumed 
silently, by her bed-side for some time, and then told 
her to rise and walk. Here, then, are two possi- 
bilities. She may have been relieved of the tender- 
ness in her bowels by the medicines previously ad- 
ministered ; or else the case may have been wrongly 
diagnosed, and may have been simply a case of ner- 



Christian Science. 143 

vous hysteria, like that treated in a somewhat similar 
way by Dr. Krackowitzer. There is, assuredly, no 
proof whatever in this case that Mrs. Eddy's theory 
is true. 

On pages 77-8 our author gives a report of a case 
in which she relieved labor pains and brought about 
a painless child-birth, the mother certifying that she 
sat up the evening of the same day for several hours, 
and the next day ate a boiled dinner of meat and veg- 
etables. The third day she dressed, and in a week 
was able to perform her household duties, running 
up and down stairs. Her recovery was notable also in 
that it was recovery not only from the prostration of 
labor, but also from prolapsus uteri, from which she 
had suffered for several years. In this case it is to be 
observed, 1. That Mrs. Eddy does not claim to be able 
to bring about painless child-birth in every case. 2. 
That one or any other number of such isolated cases 
would not prove the truth of Mrs. Eddy's theory. 
There have been instances of painless child-birth in 
every age, and among savage tribes it is the rule. 
3. It is well known that the birth of a child not unfre- 
quently results in the recovery of the mother from 
uterine troubles. 

On page 88 Mrs. Eddy gives three remarkable 
cases. Mr. R. O. Badgely, of Cincinnati, is quoted 
as having written, "My painful and swollen foot was 
restored at once on your receipt of my letter, and that 
very day I put on my boot and walked several miles." 
Previously he had written, "A stick of timber fell on 
my foot from a building, crushing the bones. Can- 
not you help me? I am sitting in great pain, with 
my foot in a bath." Here observe, 1. That Mr. 
Badgely gives no other evidence than his own opin- 



144 Christian Science. 

ion that the bones of his foot were crushed. 2. Mrs. 
Eddy herself does not claim to be able to cure broken 
bones, alleging that it is best to leave the adjustment 
of broken bones to a surgeon. 3. Air. Badgely, at the 
time he wrote first, was sitting with his swollen foot 
in a bath, presumably, of course, a hot bath, which is 
a specific treatment for bruises, recommended by all 
the medical faculty. 4. His recovery dates, not from 
the hour, but only from the day, when Mrs. Eddy re- 
ceived his letter imploring her help. This report, if 
true, shows conclusively that Mr. Badgely exagger- 
ated his injury, and was cured by a hot water bath, 
and not by Mrs. Eddy's "absent treatment," of which 
more anon. 

The next case is that of a child who was suffering 
from ulcerated bowels. His physicians had given him 
up, saying they could do nothing more for him. He 
was reduced to a skeleton, was losing strength daily, 
and could take nothing but the simplest nourishment, 
such as gruel, etc. He was taking laudanum. "Airs. 
Eddy came in, took him from the cradle, kissed him, 
and laid him down again and went out. In less than 
an hour he was taken up, had his playthings, and was 
well. All his symptoms changed at once. For months 
previously blood and mucus had passed his bowels, 
but that day the evacuation was natural, and the next 
day he ate all he wanted." 

Here, again, the facts show that Mrs. Eddy was 
in no wise responsible for the cure. The child was 
practically under treatment, the parents continuing 
to give him, up to the hour of Mrs. Eddy's visit, the 
nourishment suitable for his case, and laudanum to 
quiet his pain. Here was a coincidence, and nothing 
more. When ulcers have discharged, the healing pro- 



Christian Science. 145 

cess is very speedy, and appetite is recovered at once. 
Had Mrs. Eddy not paid her visit to this child, it is 
quite probable that the cure would have been attrib- 
uted to the skill of his physicians, who had done all 
they could do for him. 

A still more wonderful case is that of Mr. Clark, 
of Lynn, Mass. He had been confined to his bed for 
six months with hip-disease, caused by falling upon 
a wooden spike when quite a boy. As Mrs. Eddy 
entered the house she met the physician, who told 
her that Mr. Clark w r as dying. She found him with 
the damp of death upon his brow. The doctor had 
just probed the ulcer on the hip, and showed the rot- 
ten bone adhering to the probe in proof of his asser- 
tion that the bone was carious for several inches. The 
doctor went out, leaving Mrs. Eddy in possession of 
the field. The patient lay with eyes fixed and sight- 
less. In a few moments after she went to the bed- 
side his death-pallor passed away, he fell asleep, and 
his breathing became natural. In about ten minutes 
he opened his eyes and said, "I feel like a new man. 
My suffering is all gone." She told him to rise and 
dress himself, and take supper with his family, which 
he did. She saw him in the yard next day, and was 
informed that he was well in two weeks, pieces 
of the wood discharging from his sore as it healed. 
Mrs. Eddy adds naively that she learns that his phy- 
sician claims to have cured him, and that his mother 
was threatened with incarceration in a lunatic asylum 
for saying, "It was none other than God and that 
woman who healed him." 

The reader will observe, 1. That this story is to be 
believed on the unsupported authority of Mrs. Eddy. 
2. That, she being witness, it shows that the physician 



146 Christian Science. 

claims to have effected the cure. Airs. Eddy asks us 
to believe her statement without hearing the physi- 
cian, which is, to say the least, not a wise way to de- 
cide a controversy. The public has a right to hear 
both sides of the case. 3. That Mrs. Eddy does not 
claim to have treated the' patient. All she says is 
that she entered his room, went to his bed-side, and, 
after hearing him say he was feeling better, and had 
no pain, told him to rise and dress himself, and sup 
with his family. 4. That it is quite conceivable that 
the physician's discouragement may have been 
groundless, his patient being, in fact, upon the very 
eve of recovery in consequence of the remedies used. 
Cases of recovery after apparent death had super- 
vened are so numerous and well authenticated that, 
unless already prejudiced in her favor, nobody can 
believe this case to have been cured by Airs. Eddy. 
That the ulcer discharged for two weeks after Airs. 
Eddy's visit shows that recovery was in progress, and 
it is not at all improbable that the physician may 
have mistaken rotten wood for carious bone. 5. That 
her command to rise and dress himself, etc., may 
have been, like the command given by Dr. Kracko- 
witzer, as related above, the means of inducing a more 
vigorous reaction. 

When reading Airs. Eddy's accounts of her miracles 
we cannot forget that she has upset her own theory 
by relating the steps which led her to adopt it. She 
has told us of her marvelous success in curing typhoid 
fever with a dilution of common salt, and dropsv 
with unmedicated pellets of sugar of milk. These 
cures are attributed by the medical fraternity to the 
fact of mental expectation. It has long been a prac- 
tice with physicians to administer harmless remedies, 



Christian Science. 147 

"pro forma " in doubtful cases after inspiring the pa- 
tient's confidence in the medicine about to be admin- 
istered. Now, if this is the case in the practice of 
some regular physicians, the success of Mrs. Eddy in 
various cases can hardly be adduced to prove any- 
thing more than has already been long known, viz., 
that in certain cases no medicine is necessary, and that 
satisfactory results can be obtained simply by excit- 
ing a proper degree of mental expectation. A friend 
of the writer, who acted as a sort of assistant sur- 
geon during the w T ar, used to relate with great glee 
how, on one occasion, being applied to by a soldier 
who complained of a severe bilious attack, and hav- 
ing no calomel, he compounded a number of bread 
pills and gave them to the patient with the caution 
not to take more than two before going to bed, and 
not to take any the next morning if the first dose 
acted properly. The next day the soldier appeared, 
weak and hollow-eyed from excessive purgation, and 
complained that those pills were the strongest he had 
ever taken in his life ! Dr. Tuke reports a case in 
which a patient dreamed she had taken rhubarb, and 
the imaginary drug acted as freely as the actual medi- 
cine would have done. Shall we wonder, then, that 
Mrs. Eddy has sometimes made people think them- 
selves well or recovering? 

Mrs. Eddy's theories and methods seem to be par- 
ticularly adapted to the cure of hysterical affections, 
to which the w r eaker sex is specially liable. "Hys- 
teria," says Dr. Buckley, 

"Can simulate every known complaint : paralysis, heart dis- 
ease, and the worst forms of fever and ague. Hypochondria, 
to which intelligent and highly-educated persons of sedentary 
habits, brooding over their sensations, are liable, especially 



148 Christian Science. 

if they are accustomed to read medical works and accounts 
of diseases and their treatment, will do the same. Dyspepsia 
has various forms, and indigestion can produce symptoms of 
organic heart disease, while diseases of the liver have often 
been mistaken by eminent physicians for pulmonary consump- 
tion. Especially in women do the troubles to which they are 
most subject give rise to hysteria, in which condition they 
may believe that they are afflicted with disease of the spine, 
of the heart, or indeed of all the organs. I heard an intelli- 
gent woman testify that she had 'heart disease, irritation of 
the spinal cord, and Bright' s disease of the kidneys, and had 
suffered from them all for ten years.' " — Faith Healing and 
Kindred Phenomena. 

The last would have been undoubtedly a witness 
most valuable for creating faith in the remedial power 
of Christian Science. 

The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, D. D., is authority 
for the statement that at St. Luke's Hospital, New 
York City, a woman with a swelling which her phy- 
sicians pronounced ovarian tumor was entirely re- 
lieved by the administration of ether. The swelling 
disappeared as soon as the drug' took effect, thus 
proving- itself to be the result of hysteria. Had she 
fallen into the hands of Airs. Eddy her cure by "men- 
tal treatment" would have been probably as quick as 
that by ether, and it would have gained many adher- 
ents for the new creed ; or the same result could have 
been obtained by hypnotizing her, and the hypnotist 
would have been remembered by all the woman's kin- 
dred as a miracle-worker. 

Mrs. Eddy has challenged the whole world. 
The challenge addressed to her by Dr. Charles A. L. 
Reed, of Cincinnati, which was published in the 
New York Sun of January 1, 1899, is certainly a 



Christian Science. 149 

fair proposal, but has not been noticed by "Mother 
Mary." 

Mrs. Eddy comes into the arena with her characteristic 
bravado and challenges the world to prove a negative. She 
blissfully closes her eyes to the fact that she herself has not 
proved the positive. On the contrary, her self-heralded won- 
ders rest entirely upon her own unsupported declaration, and 
that to me and to a great many other people is worth abso- 
sutely nothing. She should remember that even people who 
are not the victims of vagaries such as hers, and whose every- 
day utterances do not toy so confusingly with the eternal veri- 
ties as do hers — even such people are expected to bear the 
burden of proof when they seek to tax credulity. I, therefore, 
demand the proof of this high priestess, and that the issue 
may be clearly drawn, I shall take up a few of her declara- 
tions, seriatim: 

Mrs. Eddy says, "I healed consumption in its last stages, 
. . . the lungs being mostly consumed." 

I denounce this declaration as false, and challenge its 
substantiation by competent and disinterested testimony. 

Mrs. Eddy says, "I healed carious bones that could be 
dented with the finger." 

I denounce this declaration as false, and challenge its sub- 
stantiation by competent and disinterested testimony. 

Mrs. Eddy says, "I have healed at one visit a cancer that 
had so eaten the flesh of the neck as to expose the jugular 
vein, so that it stood out like a cord." 

I denounce this declaration as false, and challenge its sub- 
stantiation by competent and disinterested testimony. 

When Mrs. Eddy speaks of "malignant tubercular diph- 
theria" as among her cures she, by her own phraseology, pro- 
claims her utter ignorance of one of the most dangerous of 
diseases, now nearly bereft of its horrors through the benefi- 
cence of modern medical science — a disease chiefly of de- 
fenceless childhood that she and her fanatical followers would 
sacrifice upon the altar of their tragic egoism. 



150 Christian Science. 

But if Mrs. Eddy has done all of these wonders she can 
do them again. If she is so devoted to humanity in the 
altruistic fashion that she proclaims, she will not hesitate to 
demonstrate her alleged "science'' under circumstances that 
will give it the widest possible influence. To this end, if she 
will come to Cincinnati I will place at her disposal cases of 
consumption, cases of cancer, and cases of carious bones. 
She shall have them under observation for such time as she 
shall determine, and she shall dictate 'all details of their 
management. They shall, however, be under the daily obser- 
vation of a competent and disinterested person of my choice, 
but who shall have no voice in their management, and who 
shall visit them only in her presence. If she, by her Christian 
Science, shall cure any one of them, I shall proclaim her 
omnipotent from the housetop, and if she shall cure all or 
even half of them I shall cheerfully crawl on my hands and 
knees that I may but touch the hem of her walking dress. If 
it will be more to the convenience of Mrs. Eddy, and she is 
not disposed to honor us with a visit, I shall take pleasure 
in endeavoring through my friends to make a similar ar- 
rangement for her at Bellevue or some other New York 
hospital. If Mrs. Eddy will accept this challenge and cure 
one or more of the cases, she will thereby demonstrate that 
she may be something more than either a conscienceless 
speculator on human credulity, or an unfortunate victim of 
egoistic alienation. 

To which, we suppose, Airs. Eddy would reply, "An 
evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, 
and there shall no sign be given to it." Christian 
Scienee healers are not willing to afford proof. They 
must make the diagnosis, and their word unsupported 
must he aeeepted as "confirmation strong as holy 
writ." Their miracles, as will be seen presently, can 
only he performed secretly, or in the presence of sym- 
pathetic, which is to say, Christian Science witnesses. 
Mrs. Eddy fears to have her patients exposed to any 



Christian Science. 151 

risk of being injured by the transference of the un- 
believing thought of unsympathetic witnesses ! — 
Science and Health, p. 422. 

One more fact may be mentioned as aiding the un- 
biased reader to make up a verdict. It is the marked 
differences between Christian Science miracles and 
the miracles wrought by our Lord and his apostles. 
They did not court privacy w T hen performing their 
miracles. Lazarus was raised from the dead in the 
presence of a large number, who had been witnesses 
of his death. The ruler's daughter was restored to 
life under circumstances which precluded the possi- 
bility of deception. The raising of Dorcas and of 
Eutychus was public. When our Lord cleansed lep- 
ers or cured fevers he did not retire into privacy or 
resort to any mysterious methods. He simply uttered 
his word of power. So also when the apostles healed 
the sick. They spoke in the name of Jesus, and the 
cure was accomplished in an instant. Not only do 
Christian Scientists heal privately, and by the use of 
mysterious methods, but their cures are limited to 
certain classes of disease. Our Lord healed the ear 
of the servant of the high priest which had been cut 
off by Peter's sword. He healed leprosy, the most 
invincible of diseases. He and his disciples raised 
the dead. Mrs. Eddy's book has the motto of the 
new church on its cover, "Heal the sick, raise the 
dead," but we observe in it no report of any case of 
leprosy healed, nor of amputated members restored, 
nor yet any case of resurrection. Christian Scientists 
claim to work their cures by the same methods by 
which Jesus wrought his "so-called miracles." Why 
do their works, both as to character and methods, fall 
so far below the miracles of our Lord? 



152 Christian Science. 

Not only is it true that Christian Scientist healers 
fail to achieve the same results which attended the 
ministry of the apostles, but they do not always suc- 
ceed in their attempted cures. Our Lord made no 
failures. The apostles did what they attempted to 
do. As we shall see, this cannot be said of Christian 
Scientists. 



XL 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE. 

A careful study of Christian Science methods in 
healing will convince any unbiased reader that such 
methods are well adapted to influence all who are pe- 
culiarly liable to hypnotic passivity, as well as to cre- 
ate in less sensitive patients a degree of mental ex- 
pectancy which will often answer the purpose of 
drug stimulation. Mrs. Eddy gives the following 
directions to mental healers : 

I. The healer must acquire the highest degree of 
self-confidence. He must watch "lest he be over- 
whelmed by a growing sense of the odiousness of 
sin, and by the unveiling of sin in his own thoughts." 
— Science and Health, p. 365. He must suffer no be- 
lief in his own ill-desert to mar his peace, and so will 
be "calm in the presence of both sin and disease, 
knowing, as he does, that God is Love, and that God 
is All." — Ibid. This blinding of one's self to the 
thought of his own ill-desert will tend to give him a 
self-possessed and confident manner, which is of the 
utmost importance. Again, "To succeed in healing 
you must conquer your own beliefs and fears as well 
as those of your patients, and you must rise daily into 
higher and holier consciousness." This "conscious- 
ness" is nothing more than the conviction aforesaid 
that God is all, etc. The practitioner who can 
bring himself to believe this, with its resulting doc- 
trines of the unreality of sin and sickness, will feel 



154 Christian Science. 

himself fully competent to deal with the "beliefs" of 

others to the contrary, and will comport himself with 
quite the air of a conqueror, which, in fact, he is, 
having conquered his own reason and common sense. 
Xo mere good opinion of one's self will suffice. "In 
the Science of Mental Healing it is imperative to be 
perfect, for victory rests on the side of immutable 
right/' This persuasion of one's own immaculate 
perfection is a degree of self-confidence which goes 
far beyond the modesty of the medical profession, 
and will of itself tend to bring mental healers a mul- 
titude of patients. The public is generally willing to 
give considerable credence to reformers who seem to 
believe in themselves, and the sick in especial respond 
readily to the confidence of a physician. 

2. Mrs. Eddy advises sympathetic behavior. This, 
of course, applies to the patient's infirmities, and not 
to his diseases, which are to be accounted unreal, and 
not to be admitted as entitling him to sympathy. No- 
body can fail to approve "the tender word and gentle 
touch, sweet forbearance with an invalid's hastiness, 
and pitiful patience with his fears." — p. 366. 

3. It is essential to relieve the patient's fears, change 
his belief, and rouse mental energy. "Establish the 
scientific sense of health, and you relieve the oppressed 
organ, and the inflammation, decomposition, or de- 
posit, will abate, and the disabled organ will resume 
its healthy functions." — p. 372. Thus, "chills and 
heat are often the form in which fever * manifests 
itself. Change the mental state, and the chills and 
fever disappear." — p. 374. 

1 In early editions the words "the fear" stood in this place. 
I- Mrs. Eddy afraid to say that disease is fear after having 
said it so often? Or is this a typographical error? 



Christian Science. 155 

Not only has Mrs. Eddy learned something from 
the hypnotists, but she has learned something also 
from the failures of despondent physicians. "By 
conceding to discord such great power a large ma- 
jority of doctors depress mental energy, which is the 
only real recuperative power," she thinks ; and hence 
this very wise and proper advice to her students : 
"Avoid talking illness to the patient. Make no un- 
necessary inquiries relative to feelings or disease. 
Never startle with a discouraging remark about re- 
covery, or draw attention to certain symptoms as un- 
favorable, or speak aloud the name of the disease. 
Never say beforehand how much you have to contend 
with in a case, or encourage, in the patient's thought, 
the expectation of growing worse before the crisis is 
past." — pp. 394- ? 5- Every reputable physician will 
endorse these as sound rules of treatment, especially 
when no medicine is to be administered. In his ad- 
dress on "The Mental Factors in the Causation and 
Cure of Disease," which I quoted in a previous chap- 
ter, Dr. R. L. Payne, of Norfolk, Va., advises his 
fellows of the healing art, in order to inspire con- 
fidence, to make a thorough examination. "Carefully 
interrogate each organ, auscultate, percuss, palpate, 
scrutinize the tongue, note the pulse and tempera- 
ture, and investigate the secretions, and if you gain 
nothing beyond what you have almost intuitively de- 
termined, you have none the less impressed your pa- 
tient with the idea that you have given his condition 
a proper study, and are competent to treat him." Fur- 
ther, he advises that the patient be given "such men- 
tal distraction from his ailment as his condition will 
admit of," such as pleasant conversation, trips away 
from home, change of scene, and last, but not least, 



156 Christian Science. 

the stimulant of hope. "In so far as you can, con- 
sistently with truth, lead the patient to believe a given 
result will accrue, and you will have gone a long way 
in reaching the end of your medication. Excite his 
will power, make him believe that much depends upon 
his own determination, and always remember to ad- 
minister the cordial of hope." 

4. The nurse should be cheerful, and by all means 
a believer in Christian Science. "An ill-tempered or 
complaining person should not be a nurse. The nurse 
should be full of cheerfulness, faith, light — a believer 
in God, Truth." — p. 394. Aside from the tonic effects 
of cheerfulness, it is manifest that it would always be 
best for a mental healer to have as his assistant in the 
sick-room one who firmly believes in the glorious 
"Science of Mental Healing." 

5. While it is alleged that faith in Christian Science 
is not needed to insure a cure, the healer must never- 
theless take pains to make the patient a convert during 
the healing process. This is, in fact, but a part of the 
process. The sick "know nothing of the mental pro- 
cess by which they are depleted, and next to nothing 
of the metaphysical method by which they can be 
healed . . . Assure them that they think too much 
about their ailments, and have already heard too much 
on that subject. Turn their thoughts away from 
their bodies to higher objects. Teach them that their 
bodies are sustained by Spirit, not matter, and they 
will find rest in God, divine Love, more than in obliv- 
ious sleep." — pp. 4i4-'i5. If the patient is only an 
ordinary Christian, without any acquaintance with the 
vagaries of Christian Science theology, this will be a 
good introduction to the blessed religion whose alias 
is the "Science of Mental Healing." It is carefully 



Christian Science. 157 

coated, and sufficiently like orthodox teaching to be 
swallowed whole and without suspicion. This pro- 
cess must be kept up during the patient's convales- 
cence. "Explain audibly to your patients (as soon 
as they can bear it) the utter control which Mind 
holds over the body. Show them how mortal mind 
seems to induce disease by certain fears and false 
conclusions, and how divine Mind can cure by oppo- 
site thoughts." — pp. 41 5-' 16. 

6. Take pains to isolate the patient from all who 
doubt the truth of Mrs. Eddy's doctrines. "It is 
equally important in metaphysical practice that the 
minds which surround your patient should not act 
against your influence by continually expressing such 
opinions as may alarm or discourage, either by giv- 
ing antagonistic advice or through unspoken thoughts 
resting on your patient. While it is certain that Mind 
can remove any obstacle, you yet need the ear of your 
auditor. It is more difficult to make yourself heard 
mentally when others are thinking about your pa- 
tients or conversing with them. Therefore you should 
seek to be alone with God and the sick while treating 
the cases confided to your care." — p. 422. This will 
enable the mental healer to get the patient completely 
under his influence, and also to hypnotize him, should 
he choose to do so, without being discovered. 

7: The healer must in certain cases use authority, 
and order the patient to get well. "If it becomes 
necessary to startle mortal mind in order to break its 
dreams of suffering, vehemently tell your patient that 
he must awake." — p. 418. It has been seen that 
shock of almost any sort is useful in bringing about 
reaction. Dr. Krackowitzer shocked his patient by 
commanding her in a loud voice to get out of bed and 



158 Christian Science. 

dress and go down to the parlor; and we have re- 
ferred to a case in which the shock of a railroad acci- 
dent has cured rheumatism. Now, Mrs. Eddy is wise 
in her generation, and an example to all wise physi- 
cians, in thus advising her students to rouse the pa- 
tient, if possible, by vehement commands. If the pa- 
tient should resent this method of dismissing his 
ailments, an explanation is always in order. "Should 
you thus startle the mind in order to relieve its fears, 
afterwards make known to your patient your motive 
for this shock, showing him that it was to facilitate 
recovery." 

8. The healer should never be discouraged by a re- 
lapse. "If, from any cause, your patient suffers a re- 
lapse, meet the case mentally and courageously, know- 
ing there can be no reaction in Truth." — p. 417. The 
doctrine that there is no reaction in Truth, which can- 
not be denied, since Truth in this system is but an- 
other name for God, is to be maintained at all haz- 
ards, even though the patient should die while the 
healer is trying to make him walk, as in the case 
of Mr. Kershaw, related in the next chapter. If 
the facts don't agree with Airs. Eddy's theory, so 
much the worse for the facts. And, besides, what 
effect would facts have in destroying the conviction 
of Christian Scientists that "there is no reaction in 
Truth?" This oracle is sufficiently Delphic to meet 
any emergency. Not death itself among mortals 
could change the Changeless. 

9. Airs. Eddy recommends the "silent treatment" 
as ordinarily best, though permitting the spoken ar- 
gument when this seems necessary. The value of the 
silent treatment is supposed to reside in the fact that 
thoughts transferred from healer to patient without 



Christian Science. 159 

words are, if anything, more effective than thoughts 
transferred through speech. "If you mentally and 
silently eall the disease by name as you argue against 
it, as a general rule the body will respond more 
quickly — just as a person replies more readily when 
his name is spoken/' says Mrs. Eddy, though she 
recommends a more excellent way, which is, "to let 
Spirit, through the power of Divine Love, bear wit- 
ness, without arguments, to the healing Truth." — p. 
409. Which is to say, let the healer simply think that 
Spirit will certainly heal the disease, whatever it may 
be, without engaging in a mental argument w r ith the 
disease or with the patient. He must "silently reas- 
sure his patient as to his exemption from disease and 
danger." "The silence of Christian Science and Love 
is eloquent." — p. 410. 

Other mental healers have carried Mrs. Eddy's 
hints out to their logical sequences. Helen Wilmans 
says that thought is a force, a kind of ether, which 
goes where you send it. I deem it unnecessary to dis- 
cuss the question of telepathy in this connection. Suf- 
fice it to say, there is no proof that in any case the 
thought is really transferred. Some effect is un- 
doubtedly produced in the way of exciting expecta- 
tion by the healer's mysterious silence. He is sup- 
posed to be treating the case, and thinks he is. Fur- 
ther, he is known to be attempting to heal through 
mental power alone ; and this thought is already trans- 
ferred to the patient, even before the silent treatment 
begins, unless the patient happens to be unconscious, 
in which case the only mental treatment possible or 
rational is to wait silently until the patient awakes 
from his stupor. If he happens to awake feeling bet- 
ter, as is frequently the case, the mental healer is ac- 



160 Christian Science. 

credited with a partial cure before he has uttered a 
word. 

It is evident that this silent treatment has in it all 
the elements of "therapeutic suggestion/' and is well 
adapted to influence sensitive subjects who are liable 
to hypnotize themselves. 

10. Mrs. Eddy recommends "absent treatments," 
and her followers and imitators have elaborated her 
theory, and have profited by the credulity of thou- 
sands. kk Science can heal the sick who are absent 
from their healer," she says, "as well as the present, 
since space is no obstacle to Mind." — p. 71. Follow- 
ing in her wake, Hazzard declares, "There is no space 
nor time to mind. A person in St. Louis may be near 
to me while I am in New York. A person in the 
same room may be very distant. Sit down and think 
about the person you wish to affect. Think long 
enough and strong enough, and you are sure to reach 
him." Mrs. Eddy, in one of her publications, re- 
ports one case of heart disease which she cured with- 
out even seeing the patient, who afterwards wrote, 
"The day you received my husband's letter I became 
conscious for the first time in forty-eight hours, . . . 
and sat up. . . . The enlargement of my left side 
is gone, and the doctors pronounce me rid of heart 
disease. I had been afflicted with it from infancy. It 
became organic enlargement of the heart and dropsy 
of the chest. I was only waiting and almost longing 
to die, but you have healed me. How wonderful to 
think of it, when you and I have never seen each 
other !" 

With reference to this case, upon which Mrs. Eddy 
relies strongly, Dr. Buckley remarks : 



Christian Science. 161 

What can this prove? What evidence is there that she 
would not have become conscious if the letter had not been 
written? If she were ever to come out of an unconscious 
state and recover, it must be at some time. The coincidence 
of Mrs. Eddy's receiving a letter from the husband does not 
show any connection between the two facts, for such letters 
have been sent and the patients died. To my personal 
knowledge her treatments have failed, and her predictions 
have not been fulfilled, the patients dying in excruciating 
agony. Instances which have occurred, and can be repro- 
duced at any time, of the attempted absent treatment of per- 
sons who never existed are numerous, for there is not one 
of this class of healers who cannot be imposed upon. This 
is sufficient to raise a powerful presumption that the spiritual 
presence which they evoke, and to which they speak, is "such 
stuff as dreams are made of." 

Mrs. Eddy assumes thought transference as an es- 
tablished fact. Professional hypnotists have more to 
say about the possibility of thought transference than 
others, and Hudson claims that experimental tele- 
pathy is much more easily produced when hypnotism 
is practiced after the method of Mesmer. The hypno- 
tized subject, it is claimed, will experience all the sen- 
sations of the hypnotist. This similarity of teaching 
is suspicious. 

ii. Before leaving the subject of Christian Science 
practice, it is well to bear in mind another statement of 
Mrs. Eddy's, as to what constitutes the most favorable 
condition of success in Christian Science healing. 
This is ignorance on the part of the patient. "A pa- 
tient thoroughly booked in medical theories has less 
sense of the divine power, and is more difficult to heal 
through Mind, than an aboriginal Indian who never 
bowed the knee to the Baal of civilization. " — Science 
and Health, p. 381. The last clause is omitted in 



1 62 Christian Science. 

recent editions, so that instead of "than an aboriginal 
Indian," etc., we read "than one who is hot." The 
reason of this revision is plain. 

Perhaps the following specimen treatment, as re- 
ported by Helen Wilmans, will indicate somewhat the 
elements of power in this style of healing : 

I said to him mentally, You have no disease; what you 
call your disease is a fixed mode of thought arising from the 
absence of positive belief in absolute good. Be stronger, I 
said; you must believe in absolute good. I am looking at 
you, and I see you a beautiful, strong spirit, perfectly sound. 
You are not diseased; the shadow of a doubt is reflected in 
your feet, but it has no real existence. There, look down 
yourself, and see that it is gone. Why, it was a mere negation, 
and the place where you located it now shows for itself as 
sound as the rest of your body. Don't you know that im- 
perfection is impossible in that beautiful structure, your real 
self? Since there is no evil in the universe, and since man is 
the highest expression of good amidst ubiquitous Good, how 
can you be diseased? You are not diseased. There is not 
an angel in all the spheres sounder or more divine than you 
are. Then I spoke aloud, "There, now." I said, "you won't 
have that pain again." As I said it there was a surge of con- 
viction through me that seemed to act on the blood vessels 
and made me tingle all over. 

Here is "therapeutic suggestion" again. 



XII. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE FAILURES. 

Mrs. Eddy contends that all medical systems are 
fraudulent, and based on a supposititious "material 
law" ; but she takes pains to advise her students to 
follow, in their practice, substantially the same rules 
that are obeyed by all intelligent physicians. In addi- 
tion to these directions, she adds such recommenda- 
tions as are adapted, if not designed, to hypnotize 
sensitive patients, and in any event to insure to the 
mental practitioner, in case the patient recovers, the 
credit of accomplishing a cure. 

But our new healing oracle claims to have discov- 
ered an infallible rule, an undeviating principle, which 
she spells with a capital P, by which all diseases may 
be cured, food rendered unnecessary, cold and heat 
defied, and death itself driven from earth. Here is 
her argument : 

If mathematics presents a thousand different examples of 
one principle, the proving of one example authenticates all 
the others. A simple statement of Christian Science, if dem- 
onstrated by healing, contains the proof of all here said of it. 
If one of the statements in this book is true, every one must 
be true, for not one departs from its system or rule. You 
can prove for yourself, dear reader, the Science of Healing, 
and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct inter- 
pretation of Scripture. — Science and Health, p. 539. 

No finer specimen of Mrs. Eddy's logic than this 
paragraph can be found. It is the very quintessence 



164 Christian Science. 

of the aroma of her thought. It consists of four 
statements, the first of which is an axiomatic truth, 
while the rest are transparent fallacies. When it has 
been shown that ia — b» 2 = a 2 — 2ab — b 2 , a principle 
has been illustrated which enables us to find the square 
of the sum of any two algebraic quantities. But it 
does not follow from this mathematical truth that if 
Mrs. Eddy succeeds in healing one case of disease. 
she thereby demonstrates her rule, and much less her 
own infallibility. Neither can it be said that if one 
statement in her book is true, all of them are true. In 
trying to lug into her arguments a great many f; 
to prove her theory, she has made glaring mistake-, 
both in her reasoning and in the facts upon which she 
has built her arguments. If she adduces as proofs 
facts that are not facts, her argument is weakened by 
just so much as she relies on those facts ; and yet her 
argument is, that if she states one fact correctly, this 
proves that she has made no erroneous statement in 
any particular! Suppose the m: of Egypt, 

prior to their miracle-working contest with Mos 
had declared that all their miracles were wrought by 
the same rule, and that if they succeeded in working 
one, their success proved the truth of their whole 
em. Those who accepted that reasoning as con- 
clusive would have been compelled to close their eyes 
to facts when the time came that these magicians 
could no longer "do likewise with their enchant- 
ment-." And this is precisely what Mrs. Eddy would 
have us do. Her success in a single instance pr< 
her infallible. Her failures must be accounted 
without in anywise denying her "rule." 

r, again, would any number of cures by Chris- 
tian Science methods prove that Mrs. Eddy's interpre- 



Christian Science. 165 

tations of Scripture are correct. As we have - 
Catholics. Greek and Roman, Protestants. Mormons, 
and even heathen medicine-men. have succeeded in 
healing diseases according to their several rules. 
- this prove that all the diverse interpretations of 
Scripture adopted by Roman Catholics. Protestants 
and Mormons are correct ? Does it elevate heathen- 
ism to the same platform of demonstration with 
Christianity? It must be so, if Airs. Eddy's logic is 
right. Her argument proves too much. Her diffi- 
culty is in confounding mathematical with moral cer- 
tainty, and then assuming that her method has all the 
certainty of a mathematical principle. She is wrong 
in both directions. Many passages of Scripture are 
not susceptible of interpretation with certainty. The 
facts necessary to explain them are not at hand, and 
when we have the facts, there may be difference- :: 
opinion as to precisely what the facts prove. Besides. 
Mrs. Eddy's method is neither mathematical nor 
philosophical. The only true scientific method is to 
deduce a general law from a large number of facts in 
which, certain conditions being present, the sequences 
are absolutely uniform. If Newton had found that 
some of his apples fell toward the moon and passed 
out of sight, while others fell into his lap. he would 
never have discovered the law of gravitation. But he 
found that all apples fell toward the earth, and by fur- 
ther experiments was able to deduce his law. There 
were no exceptions. 

w this is a very simple and elementary principle 
of reasoning, which Mrs. Eddy has ignored, if indeed 
she ever learned it. Her patients — including, if I am 
not mistaken, one or more of her husbands — have died 
under Christian Science treatment. Does that prove 



166 Christian Science. 

anything ? Are we not bound to conclude that if she 
fails in one case her rule must be wrong? Must we 
take the familiar ground that "exceptions prove the 
rule," and assume that the greater the number of ex- 
ceptions, the better the rule is proven? Or must we 
conclude that a failure occurring in the practice of 
people who profess to heal all manner of diseases on 
"a demonstrable Principle," shows conclusively that 
their so-called "Principle" has not yet been demon- 
strated ? Take the following case in point : 

Thomas Greenwood Kershaw, leader of the Christian 
Science congregation in Tacoma, Washington, died of acute 
pneumonia November 12th as a result of his refusal to re- 
ceive medical treatment. According to reports he was a man 
of the highest education and intelligence, and until he identi- 
fied himself with Christian Science was one of the most ac- 
tive and successful business men in Tacoma. Since em- 
bracing that doctrine, though himself a sufferer from a 
broken hip, he had devoted his entire time to promulgating 
the faith and administering to the afflicted. When taken ill 
Mr. Kershaw, despite the entreaties of his family, refused to 
see physicians, and placed himself in the care of a woman 
Christian Science healer at Savannah, 111., who, he said, was 
able to relieve him, regardless of distance. He was visited 
by several of his Christian Science followers, and at their 
suggestion he rose from the bed and took a step forward. 
He would have fallen had he not been caught. It was then 
found that he was dead. — Philadelphia Medical Journal. 

This is but a typical case. This man saw no incon- 
sistency in his course, notwithstanding his own ina- 
bility to heal, or find some one of his associates who 
could heal, his broken hip; and yet he persists in 
trusting the theory which he has embraced until he is 
dying, and at last falls dead in the very act of rising 



Christian Science. 167 

from his bed to demonstrate the unreality of his sick- 
ness ! If this man had obeyed the dictates of reason, 
he would have remembered the proverb, "Physician, 
heal thyself," and would not have risked his life on 
the treatment for pneumonia, which he supposed him- 
self to be receiving from a woman two thousand miles 
away. 

In the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer of No- 
vember 27, 1898, the following item, copied from an 
exchange, appeared : 

The pretensions of Christian Science have again been 
brought prominently before the public by the death of the 
gifted correspondent, Harold Frederic, and the verdict of 
the coroner's jury that the persons responsible for his death 
were guilty of manslaughter. Here is a sort of summary of 
the Christian Science doctrine as taken from the book of 
Prophetess Eddy : 

"You say a boil is painful ; but that is impossible, for mat- 
ter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests 
your belief in pain through inflammation and swelling, and 
you call this belief a boil. Now administer mentally to your 
patient a high attenuation of truth on this subject and it will 
soon cure the boil. The fact that pain cannot exist where 
there is no mortal mind to feel it is a proof that this so-called 
mind makes its own pain — that is, its own belief of pain." 

Nothing could be more complete than this demonstration 
of the non-existence of pain and disease if the patient could 
only be brought to realize it, and could arise and walk and 
enjoy himself, just as a well man does. Unfortunately for 
Harold Frederic, he was not able to realize this absence of 
pain until he was dead, after which no further complaint 
was heard from him. Before his death, however, he begged 
not to be abandoned to the Christian Scientists, but he had 
no longer strength of will to drive them away. 

Cases might be multiplied, but these will suffice for 
our purpose. 



1 68 Christian Science. 

Now, in view of the fact, which nobody can deny, 
that every person who has ever been treated by Chris- 
tian Scientists must die some time, and that many die, 
as did Messrs. Kershaw and Frederic, while they are 
under treatment, do not these ever-recurring excep- 
tions to her ''rule" show that it cannot be relied upon ? 
If twice two sometimes made four, and other times 
did not, what faith could we have in the multiplica- 
tion table ? 

Christian Scientist healers are discreetly silent as 
to their innumerable failures. Every instance in 
which their treatment is followed by the recovery of 
the patient is set down as a "demonstration" of Chris- 
tian Science. Failures count for nothing-, unless to 
show that the practitioner failed to "realize" the 
Truth. Does it not stand to reason that if Mrs. Eddy 
had discovered a certain method of healing all man- 
ner of sickness, and even of conquering death, her 
success would be so invariable as to show the world 
that it is wrong in rejecting her theory? 



XIII. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BODY ON THE MIND. 

I have accounted for the success of mental healers 
by exhibiting the mental factors in the cause and cure 
of disease. Mental expectation, or faith, violent emo- 
tion, shock, which causes extraordinary excitement, 
and either "simple" or hypnotic suggestion, have been 
shown to be influences sufficient to explain many re- 
markable cures, leaving out of view the vast possi- 
bilities of coincidence. But we may not conclude that 
drugs are useless, and all diseases due to mental 
causes. Two considerations, both of which are 
obvious, will prevent thoughtful readers from adopt- 
ing Mrs. Eddy's hasty generalization. One is, that 
the classes of disease which have been success- 
fully treated by mental methods do by no means ex- 
haust the category of human ills. One case of alleged 
cancer is paraded. The testimony is challenged, and 
no attention is paid to the challenge. Rheumatism, 
neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the diseases that 
may be simulated by hysteria and hypochondria, are 
conceded to afford a profitable field for Christian 
Science experiment; but Mrs. Eddy confesses the 
weakness of her system on the score of surgery. 
Many illnesses can only be relieved by surgical treat- 
ment. Another consideration is, that the influence 
of the body over the mind is a fact as well attested by 
the medical profession as the influence of the mind 
over the body. Mrs. Eddy, as we have seen, seizes 



170 Christian Science. 

upon the latter principle, and urges all the facts which 
medical science presents on that side of the question 
as proofs of her theory as to the uselessness of drugs. 
She ignores a class of facts even larger, which dem- 
onstrate to any mind open to conviction that the hu- 
man body affects the mind quite as much as the mind 
affects the body. 

The Scriptures contain a number of instances in 
which this principle is illustrated. Esau, hungry and 
dispirited after his fruitless chase, despises his birth- 
right, and sells it for a mess of pottage. Jonathan, 
faint with battle toil, finds that his "eyes have been 
enlightened" by the honey which he has tasted. Eli- 
jah, under the juniper tree, is discouraged and ready 
to die, and God not only encourages him, but first of 
all gives him rest and food. Says a brilliant writer, 
who has wrought nobly tinder the burden of constant 
infirmity : 

It is now coming to be well understood that largely the 
bodily temperament acts upon the mind; that often the fears 
of the brave and the follies of the wise can he resolved into 
neuralgia, catarrh and dyspepsia. The condition and coating 
of the tongue have become not only the tell-tale of the phys- 
ical man, but the barometer of his spirits. The animal part 
leaves its mold on the ethereal. As a dent on a can prints 
the blow on the core of yielding lard within, so the touch of 
disease disorders the mind. Insanity is a lesion in the or- 
gans. 

The diagnosis of spiritual distempers would be more sure 
if there was better acquaintance with the morbid functions 
of the human frame. How often are good men in heaviness, 
not by reason of sin, but through vitiated secretions or dis- 
turbed circulation. They mi-take the cause of lowness of 
spirit-. "Asbury," says Bishop McTyiere. "was subject to 
melancholy and dejection." The reader of his journals can 



Christian Science. 171 

see how his exhausted powers, unstrung nerves, indifferent 
health and overtaxed strength dragged down his soul into 
a slough of desperation. Sad utterances come from weari- 
ness and disease. There are hints in the pastoral epistles 
of hesitation and the misgivings in Timothy. Paul exhorts 
him to courage and cheerfulness, but wisely also prescribes 
for his indigestion and "often infirmity," the source probably 
of mental disquietude and spiritual distrust. 

In the autobipgraphies of saintly people we find them at 
times writing bitter things against themselves. Careful scru- 
tiny will connect these pitiful self-accusations with the bod- 
ily confusions and the mental vagaries of the invalid. There 
is no sadder sight than a godly person treating the natural 
droopings and dullness — the offspring of physical malady — 
as the frown of the Almighty. With the departure of the 
pain the dark pall of doubt and dismay lifts and reveals the 
mistake of a miasmatic mist for an eclipse of faith. 

God knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust. 
The highest place among the celestials will not be given to 
the saint of hearty appetite, sound sleep and thorough diges- 
tion. When the Job of saffron skin, of rasped nerves, 
scalded epigastrium and dismal liver can command himself 
and not curse God and die, he is a hero of patience and 
worthy of exaltation. And consider what a magazine of ex- 
plosive sin is in such a soul, and exposed to the fiery darts of 
Satan ! . . . With the tongue dripping with exudations 
from viscous glands, what a force is needed to restrain ex- 
pectoration of venom on rivals ! What martyrdom to keep 
silent and swallow his own bubbling bile ! Be thankful for 
the smallest civility of speech from mortals whose dinners 
decay without digestion, inflaming the blood and leaving on 
the lip a bitter cud. 1 

Every wise physician, and every thoughtful soul 
outside the ranks of Christian Scientists, will approve 

1 Rev. J. J. Lafferty, LL. D., in Richmond Christian Ad- 
vocate. 



172 Christian Science. 

these statements. We are "fearfully and wonderfully 
made;" and one of the most fearful and wonderful 
things about us is that our frames of dust do so clog 
and hinder the freedom of the immortal mind. An 
abscess in the liver will becloud the most sanguine 
spirit, nor will the darkness disappear until the sur- 
geon has made an incision, drawn off the poisonous 
pus, and introduced a drainage tube. Why is it that 
the consumptive is ordinarily so cheerful, and often 
succeeds in doing a vast amount of useful work, even 
when in the advanced stages of his disease, while the 
sufferer from jaundice is melancholy, and incapaci- 
tated for either mental or physical exertion? In the 
one case, the disease is attended with a fever which 
quickens the circulation, and drives the blood toward 
the head, flushing the cheek and also nourishing the 
brain, while in the other the circulation is sluggish, 
the brain is anaemic, and the whole system is left with- 
out proper nourishment. It is a well-established fact 
that drugs which alter the disturbed secretions, and 
relieve the system of noxious matter, will invariably 
bring relief from distressing mental symptoms, as well 
as clear the complexion, and change the coating of 
the tongue. 

Christian Scientists claim peculiar success in deal- 
ing with insanity. This may well be questioned save 
in cases of hysterical mania. Many of the facts of 
insanity and its correlated forms of disease, such as 
epilepsy, paralysis, and cretinism, are such as effec- 
tually explode the theory that all disease originates 
in the mind ; though it has been proven conclusively 
that insanity may result from the acceptance of Mrs. 
Eddy's views. 

Medical science has long ago demonstrated that 



Christian Science. 173 

in even case of insanity there is some lesion in the 
brain substance. The brain is now mapped out, and 
the skilful surgeon can often determine, by a study of 
his patient's symptoms, not only the character of the 
lesion, but in many cases the precise locality of the 
brain in which it can be found. Where there is no 
sign of injury on the surface of the skull, surgeons 
may and do succeed in diagnosing the cause of paraly- 
sis accurately, and have raised the skull, or removed 
buttons of bone from the interior surface, the result 
being the patient's complete recovery. That insanity 
is often due to concussion and fracture of the skull is 
now thoroughly established. Folsome mentions a 
case reported by S. K. Towle {Pepper's System of 
Medicine, p. 145) of a soldier who was, when he en- 
tered the army, a model young man, amiable and af- 
fectionate. On his return from the army he was ad- 
mitted into a soldiers' home, where he soon showed 
himself an example of almost total depravity. He 
had a small scar on his head, which he attributed to a 
flesh wound. After his death, which was very sud- 
den, autopsy revealed the presence of a bullet, which 
had fractured the skull, and, passing through the 
membranes, had partially entered the brain. The in- 
ternal table of the skull was splintered, and there was 
evidence of severe chronic inflammation all round the 
wound, with an accumulation of pus in the brain at 
the point where the bullet projected into it. It is now 
well known that, could an examination have been 
made by means of the Roentgen X-rays, the bullet 
would have been located, the skull promptly trephined, 
the patient's sanity restored, and his life greatly pro- 
longed. Dr. Buckley reports the case of a negro who 



174 Christian Science. 

was wounded during the war between the States by a 
fragment of a shell. He wandered about for several 
years, to all appearances a drivelling idiot, when cer- 
tain surgeons became interested in him, and concluded 
that his idiocy was probably due to pressure upon his 
brain. They accordingly trephined his skull, and, on 
lifting the piece of bone which had been pressing 
down upon his brain, they were astounded as the light 
of intelligence returned to his eye, and he said, "Wo 
were at Manassas yesterday; where are we to-day?" 
Similar cases, in which operations have brought pa- 
tients up from the jaws of death, some of them be- 
ing already in a state of coma, have occurred so 
frequently in recent years that those who refuse to 
believe must needs be blind to facts. 

Dr. Brown-Sequard, in his lectures on "The Physi- 
ology and Pathology of the Central Nervous System," 
relates a case which is conclusive, as showing that 
insanity is sometimes due solely to physical condi- 
tions. The patient had never exhibited any symptom 
of mental disease until one morning he became a 
maniac as soon as he set foot on the floor when getting 
out of bed. He was forced back upon the bed, and 
was immediately sane. During the morning he at- 
tempted several times to rise, with the same result 
each time. A physician was called, who, in the course 
of his examination, discovered that when he held the 
boy's right great toe with his finger and thumb, the 
leg was drawn up instantly, and the muscles of the 
jaw suddenly convulsed, and that when he released 
the toe, these effects ceased immediately. Further ex- 
amination disclosed a small irritated point on the skin, 
scarcely visible, and when this was removed by the 



Christian Science. 175 

knife, the boy was freed from his unpleasant sensa- 
tions, and they did not return. 1 

Post-mortem examinations have revealed the fact 
that many cases of insanity were due to tumors, and 
there is evidence that the irritation and malnutrition 
due to the presence of tape-worms in the intestines 
have occasioned serious mental and nervous derange- 
ment. Kuchenmeister collected many cases of cystic 
worms in the brain. In sixteen there were no morbid 
svmptoms during life, due, doubtless, to the slight de- 
gree of pressure exerted upon the brain substance. 
Six cases showed slight evidence of mental disturb- 
ance, twenty-four were cases of epilepsy, six of cramp, 
forty-two of paralysis, and twenty-three of mental dis- 
turbance of varying intensity. "Impairment of will 
is not uncommon in antero-frontal and other cerebral 
tumors, and failure of memory, depression of spirits, 
and even acute mania, occur." (Pepper, System of 
Medicine, p. 1038.) 

It is well know r n that congenital insanity is asso- 
ciated always, either with irregular development of 
the skull or with impairment of the brain tissue, and 
frequently with other deformities, such as hare-lip, 
cleft palate, and with defective sight and hearing. 
In nearly all cases of idiocy this malformation of the 
skull is marked. Dropsy of the brain, or change in 
the interstitial tissues, producing pressure, has often 
been revealed by autopsy in cases of acute dementia. 
The phenomena resulting from "softening of the 
brain" are so well known as hardly to require re- 
hearsal. 

1 Related also by Dr. Buckley in Faith-Healing, Christian 
Science and Kindred Phenomena. 



176 Christian Science. 

Many cases of insanity occur during the "evolu- 

tional periods of life." Boys and girls Ay ho are just 
entering upon the age of puberty are liable to attacks 
of melancholia, and sometimes of acute mania, which 
usually yield to proper treatment, and one type of in- 
sanity is known as senile. The insanity of pregnant 
women is an occurrence so common as to need no 
comment, and puerperal insanity is on the same plane. 
In all these cases, when the system is properly toned 
up, and the secretions become normal, mental health 
is resumed. Insanity is likewise associated with con- 
sumption, with gout, with rheumatism, and with 
anaemia, the mental symptoms ameliorating or grow- 
ing worse as the disease yields to treatment, or else 
progresses toward a fatal termination. 

The facts of cretinism are conclusiye as to the effect 
of physical conditions upon mental development. The 
cretin, according to Beaupre, has a head of unusual 
form and size, a squat and bloated figure, a stupid 
look, bleared, hollow and heavy eyes, and a flat nose. 

His face is of a leaden hue, his skin dirty, flabby, covered 
with tetters, and his thick tongue hangs down over his moist, 
livid lips. His mouth, always open and full of saliva, shows 
teeth going to decay. His chest is narrow, his back curved, 
his breath asthmatic, his limbs short, misshapen, without 
power. The knees are thick and inclined inward, the feet 
flat. The large head drops listlessly on the breast; the abdo- 
men is like a bag. 

The cretin is usually deaf and dumb, or else able 
only to utter a hoarse cry. Some show no signs what- 
ever of intelligence. Many are indifferent to heat 
and cold, and even to violent blows, and are appa- 
rently insensible to the most revolting odors. Some 
are unable to acquire speech, and none of them learn 



Christian Science. 177 

more than the rudiments of speech, or are able to 
perform any but the simplest tasks. Many are found 
to have water on the brain. Others, again, have 
heads abnormally small, with sutures prematurely 
ossified, and portions of the brain matter indurated, 
while in all the anterior lobes of the brain are much 
lighter than in persons of normal intelligence. The 
great mass of them, as shown by the researches of 
Roesch and Niepce, are afflicted with goitres, which 
appear at the age of arrested development. St. Lager 
has demonstrated the fact that cretinism is confined to 
metalliferous districts, occurring most frequently 
where the pyrites of iron and of copper predominate, 
and there is much evidence tending to prove that the 
cause of goitre, which prevails in those districts, is 
also the cause of cretinism ; or, at any rate, as Maffei 
puts it, "goitre is the beginning of that degeneration 
of which cretinism is the end." 1 

Add to these facts the phenomena of alcoholism. 
The intemperate use of alcoholic beverages is now 
known to result, sooner or later, in a degeneration of 
the entire brain structure. The brain becomes coagu- 
lated, and when this process has gone far enough, the 
poor drunkard dies of "mania a potu." Drs. Pritch- 
ard and Esquirol agree in declaring that one-half the 
insane were first "crazy on purpose" with alcoholics. 
Lunacy, it has been well said, is "mostly saloonacy." 
Eminent authorities may be named who assert that 
one-half the idiots in the land are the children of those 
who have made fools of themselves through strong 
drink. 

Such facts are inexplicable by Christian Science or 



1 Vide Encyclopedia Brittanica, article "Cretinism. 1 



178 Christian Science. 

any other theory which attributes all diseases and de- 
formities to mental influence. Besides all this, it must 
be borne in mind that scientific autopsy and vivisection 
have given to the medical profession a complete 
knowledge of the structural character and localized 
functions of the brain, and that many diseases for- 
merly considered incurable yield readily to the sur- 
geon's knife and saw. We have seen that Mrs. Eddy 
advises the employment of surgeons. This is a com- 
plete surrender of the field. The maxim, "falsus in 
uno, falsus in omnibus" can be justly applied to any 
theory which assumes to cure all diseases and all 
accidental injuries, and yet confesses its impotency in 
dealing with broken limbs and fractured skulls. 



PART III. 



THE DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OF CHRISTIAN 
SCIENCE. 



XIV. 

AN OLD THEOLOGY IN NEW SHAPE. 

Were Christian Science only a system of mental 
healing, it would deserve to be ranked as a compara- 
tively harmless medical fad, like Thompsonianism and 
other medical vagaries which, from time to time, have 
occupied the attention and commanded the faith of 
multitudes. But that which makes it a dangerous 
enemy to rational Christian faith is that it claims to 
be a new system of theology. Mrs. Eddy asserts that 
she has received a new revelation, which is God's gos- 
pel to this age. To this revelation she has given the 
name of Christian Science. "In the nineteenth cen- 
tury," runs her bold challenge, "I affix for all time 
the word Christianity to Science, and call the world 
to battle on this issue." (Science and Health, eighty- 
fourth edition.) It is the hope of all the votaries of 
this new religion, as Mrs. Woodbury once wrote, to 
"see all so-called sciences fading away, to give place 
to the only real science — the Science of Christ-Truth, 
or Christian Science ;" and even more than that, to 
see all existing Christian churches forsaken, and cur- 
rent Christian theology overturned, as the result of 
the proclamation of this new gospel. Christian 
Science is a new Protestantism, denouncing as anti- 
Christ the whole fabric of evangelical Christian doc- 
trine, and the whole body of orthodox Christian be- 
lievers. 



182 Christian Science. 

With such a system there can be no compromise. 
Challenged to the battle, it will be my purpose in the 
following pages to demonstrate the anti-Christian 
character and heathen origin of M rs. Eddy's theology. 
She would, indeed, have us surrender our conceptions 
of every distinctive principle of the Christian religion. 

The fundamental postulate of all Christian theology 
being the existence of a personal God, she enters 
against this doctrine an ambiguous and equivocal 
denial. 

She defines God as "Principle, Life, Truth, Love, 
Mind, Spirit, Soul," and to these ideas she adds, in a 
subsequent definition, "Substance, Intelligence," de- 
claring him to be "the great I AM, the all-knowing, 
all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal." (Science 
and Health, pp. 9, 578.) There is nothing in this 
definition which answers to the conception entertained 
by intelligent Christians. It ascribes to him not only 
omniscience and eternity, but all action as well, inti- 
mating that there is no agent in the universe but God. 
Evidently she holds to the Pythagorean doctrine that 
God is the Soul of the universe. She conceives of him 
as the Divine Essence of all things. In defining him 
simply as "Spirit, Soul, Mind, Intelligence," she indi- 
cates her creed by her use of capitals, meaning that 
God is the only soul, mind, intelligence, etc. This 
was the teaching of Pythagoras, and we are not 
surprised to find a writer in The Seed (May, 1893) 
recapitulating, with manifest approval, the teachings 
of that ancient philosopher. By following in his wake, 
heathen though he was, Mrs. Eddy has, in the estima- 
tion of her worshippers, only rendered her doctrine 
more "scientific." To their enamored olfactories it 
makes no difference if her new, infallible, and unpre- 






Christian Science. 183 

cedented revelation is found to have the musty smell 
of out-worn heathenisms. 

Having made God an abstraction by defining him 
in terms which exclude, by necessary implication, the 
idea of personality, Mrs. Eddy labors to impress upon 
her readers a still more emphatic denial of the person- 
ality of God. "God is identical with nature," she 
says; he is "natural Good." (Science and Health, p. 
13.) The opposite view of God as personal she re- 
jects as "anthropomorphism, or humanization of 
Deity" (page 510), and declares that "if God is per- 
sonal, there is but one person, because there is but one 
God !" This must be so, if God is all. Orthodox the- 
ology makes God, she thinks, "a physical personality," 
a "corporeal Saviour," while she would have us con- 
sider him a "Saving Principle" (page 181). So 
strongly is she opposed to the recognition of the per- 
sonality of God that she finds even the term individ- 
ual, as applied to him, "open to objections," because 
God must be "one alone and without an equal" (page 

10). 

One is astonished at the new and foreign designa- 
tions, imported from ancient pagan philosophy, and, 
as we shall see, even from modern Buddhism, which 
she prefers to bestow upon God. Terming him "the 
only Substance," the "Principle of Being," or simply 
"Principle," "Mind," "Soul," "Spirit," etc., she takes 
pains not to admit into her nomenclature any term 
which seems to imply, even faintly, the doctrine of an 
Almighty Father, as held by all Christendom. True, 
she sometimes uses the personal pronoun he in speak- 
ing of the Divine Being, and sometimes she uses the 
word Father or the term Father in secret in referring 
to him, but when she has once waived aside all ideas 



184 Christian Science. 

of personality in telling us who and what he is, he 
must remain to her followers nothing but an infinite 
abstraction. 

At first glance, it seems possible that her doctrine 
in this particular may result from ignorance of the 
doctrine of the divine personality, as understood by 
evangelical Christians. Indeed, when speaking of 
human personality, as well as of the divine, she does 
not distinguish between the physical and metaphysical 
senses of the word person. When we say of one, "He 
possesses an agreeable person," we refer to his ap- 
pearance ; and this seems to be the sense in which 
Mrs. Eddy invariably uses the word. She seems to 
think that the very word implies limitation and form. 
But the distinctive idea conveyed by the word person 
in metaphysical parlance is. speaking broadly, the 
conjunction of life with self-consciousness, reason 
and self-direction, or will. A tree, for instance, is not 
a person, but a thing. It has life, but not self-con- 
sciousness, self-direction, or reason. An oyster is not 
a person, because it has only life and self-conscious- 
ness, lacking self-direction and reason. A dog has 
life, self-consciousness and self-direction, but is not a 
person, because it has not reason. A human being or 
an angel has all these qualities, and may therefore be 
spoken of as a person. A person, says Locke, "is a 
thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflec- 
tion." And so, since God has all these attributes, he 
may be spoken of as a person. 

But when we speak of God, we think not only of 
those qualities which constitute him a person, but also 
of those attributes in which his infinite glory resides. 
1 le is, as our Westminster Catechism has it, "infinite, 
eternal and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, 



Christian Science. 185 

power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." At a 
glance it is seen that the divine personality infinitely 
transcends the human. Man's attributes are all finite, 
while God is infinite in all his perfections. 

But Mrs. Eddy's difficulty as to the doctrine of the 
divine personality, which involves her in a wholesale 
denial of Scripture, springs logically from her defini- 
tion of God as Substance, by which she means the 
only substance in the universe. Hence, she cannot, 
with evangelical Christians, admit the truth of the 
Bible doctrine that man is a creation of the divine 
power, wisdom and love, bearing in his rational na- 
ture the image of his Creator. True, she uses the 
terms "creation" and "creature," but she very often 
uses other terms, such as "instituted" instead of "cre- 
ated." As we shall see presently, her doctrine is that 
man is an emanation from God, as a stream is an 
emanation from its fountain. He is, so far as his men- 
tal and spiritual attributes are concerned, part and 
parcel of divinity. Here is a grave divergence from 
the teaching of Christendom from time immemorial. 
Catholic theology has always held that man is not an 
emanation, not a part or subdivision of God. Were 
he a part of God, we could not conceive of him as 
"giving account of himself to God," or as receiving 
the command, "Depart from me, all ye workers of in- 
iquity," in the day of judgment. But if he is a crea- 
ture, he is under the divine sovereignty, and if he is 
a rational creature, he is justly amenable to any law 
which God may be pleased to make known for his 
guidance. The persistence of his personality is due to 
the fact that he is a creature, and not an emanation 
from God, or a part of God. The whole system of 
salvation by grace, which is certainly taught in the 



1 86 Christian Science. 

Bible, if anything is taught in it, is founded upon the 
fact that man is a rational, accountable creature. It 
was because of this fact that when Adam sinned he in- 
volved his whole posterity in his fall. His federal 
relation to his descendants in the covenant of works 
can be understood only when we contemplate him as a 
creature in whom, seminally, his whole posterity were 
contained, so that their fate was bound up necessarily 
in his conduct. As accountable creatures, both Adam 
and his descendants became the objects of divine so- 
licitude, and as such they are addressed in the words 
of gospel warning and invitation. To the fact of ac- 
countability the human conscience bears witness, as 
Paul teaches, even among heathen nations. 

That we cannot understand how God could create 
finite intelligences is no reason why we should reject 
the Bible doctrine. The fact of such a creation is as- 
serted clearly, repeatedly and unmistakably. "Thus 
saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, 
Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and 
concerning the work of my hands command ye me. I 
have made the earth, and created man upon it ; I, even 
my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all 
their host have I commanded. " But Mrs. Eddy does 
not accept the testimony of Moses and the prophets. 

Again, all true worship is founded upon this idea 
of the personality both of God and man. Only per- 
sons can offer worship, and only a person can receive 
it. Could we conceive of the law of gravitation as 
the power which created our world and all that is in 
it, we might feel a great degree of awe in contemplat- 
ing such a wonder-working principle, but we could 
not think of praying to it, nor of offering to it such 
homage as the Scriptures bid us ascribe to the King 



Christian Science. 187 

of Saints. The denial of the Christian doctrine of the 
personality of God tends manifestly to take the very 
heart out of the Christian religion. It bids us re- 
ject as meaningless myths the story of Enoch, who 
walked with God, and "was not, for God took him ;" 
t of Abraham, honored in being spoken of as the Friend 
of God; of Moses, who spoke to God as friend to 
friend, and "endured as seeing him who is invisible/' 
Relegating all these to the category of superstitious 
fable, we can hardly find ground for the faith of Da- 
vid, as he cries, "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord 
thinketh upon me." 

And yet in every way possible does Mrs. Eddy urge 
her denial of the divine personality. Not even when 
she uses scriptural terms in speaking of him is she 
content to use them in their scriptural phraseology and 
in their natural sense. Thus, for instance, when she 
quotes as a scripture statement, "God is Spirit," she 
adroitly suppresses the indefinite article, which the 
correct translation of the original requires, and which 
is used both in the common and the revised versions. 
A lawyer is hard put to when, in order to defend his 
client, he must needs garble the evidence which is 
part of the court record ; what must we think of one 
who claims to have received a divine revelation, and 
then includes in her revelation such transparent false- 
hood ? 

From what has been said, it is manifest that, unless 
Christian Scientists are content to stultify themselves 
by retaining in their conception of God and of his 
Christ ideas which their creed positively rejects, they 
can no more engage in the worship of God than they 
can bow down to the law of gravitation or pray to the 
precession of the equinoxes. Hence, as I shall show 



1 88 Christian Science. 

in the progress of this examination, "Christian 
Science" worship is quite different from our Chris- 
tian worship, as we have learned it from our Lord 
and his apostles. 

Further, when she has declared that God, and God 
only, is "Substance," thereby making him the only 
reality and the only substance in the universe, it is 
obvious that by no possibility can Mrs. Eddy escape 
the charge of teaching pantheism. True, she enters 
her protest against this charge in sundry passages ; 
but on the principle that we are not bound to accept 
apologies when the offence is often repeated, and there 
is never any profession of repentance, we can pay no 
attention to her repeated disclaimers. The basis of 
her system is the proposition that God is all. This is 
pantheism, whatever she may say to the contrary; 
since pantheism, from pan, all, and tlicos, God, is the 
word which theology employs to designate the doc- 
trine that ( irod is all. Nor can we honor her sincerity, 
save at the expense of her intelligence, when she con- 
tends that all who believe that in man soul and body 
are united, are entertaining a pantheistic idea. Ac- 
cepting, for the sake of argument, her own false defi- 
nition of pantheism, viz., that it is the belief in the 
intelligence of matter, there is no material difference 
between her theory and that of Spinoza. He taught 
that there is but one infinite substance, and that all 
finite existences are but modes or limitations of that 
one infinite substance. She makes the universe con- 
sist of one infinite substance, and views all finite in- 
telligence as the expression or "idea" of that one in- 
finite substance. Her attempts to find and maintain 
some distinction between this one infinite substance 
and all created beings, only makes her confusion 



Christian Science. 189 

worse confounded. The only difference between her 
system and that of the great Jewish philosopher is 
one of nomenclature. In either system the question 
arises, Is all the mind or spirit in the universe one 
and indivisible ? Are we to regard men and angels as 
distinct personalities, separate intelligent entities, as 
related to God ? or does all finite intelligence and con- 
sciousness blend in the one universal consciousness? 
To these questions, in her works, Mrs. Eddy makes 
the following reply : 

God is all. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. 
Life is God or Spirit, the supersensible Eternal. The uni- 
verse and Man are the spiritual phenomena of this one in- 
finite Mind. All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. 
Science declares God to be the Soul of all Being, the only 
Mind and Intelligence in the universe. All that can exist is 
God and his idea. Spirit is the only Substance, the invisible 
and indivisible God. 1 

Such views of God necessitate the rejection of all 
evangelical teaching as to the origin, nature and moral 
status of man, the doctrine of atonement, the future 
life, and every distinctive doctrine of historical Chris- 
tianity. Mrs. Eddy, as will appear in further quota- 
tions from her works, meets the issue courageously, 
and proceeds to make or to borrow new theology as 
her system requires. 

It may now be inquired, what place does Jesus oc- 
cupy in Mrs. Eddy's doctrinal scheme? 

The place of Jesus in evangelical teaching is such as 
to secure for him, not only the reverence, but the wor- 
ship of all Christian peoples. The Scriptures declare 

1 Vide Science and Health, pp. 7, 230, 365, 412, 419; and 
Unity of Good, pp. 4, 13, 30, 36 and 59. 



190 Christian Science. 

his divinity, eternity, and almightiness as the Son of 
God, and his exalted work as the Word or Revealer 
of God to man, and the mediator of the new covenant. 
He "thought it not robbery to be equal with God." 
He accepted the worship of his disciples and forgave 
sins. He declared himself to be the future judge of 
the world. Prophecy heralded his birth, first as the 
seed of the woman, which would bruise the serpent's 
head ; anon, as the Star of Jacob, and later as the Lion 
of the tribe of Judah, and still later as the Son of Da- 
vid, and the virgin-born child of Bethlehem. His 
name is the "Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Prince of 
Peace, the Everlasting Father." He is also "Emman- 
uel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us." He 
is, in his humanity, the Son of Alary and the Son of 
man ; while in his unique personality he is also divine 
— "God manifest in the flesh." The beloved disciple 
declares his eternity in the words, "In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God;" his 
divinity in the words, "And the Word was God;" his 
humanity in the words, "And the Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, . . . full of grace and 
truth." As God, he created the world, and his being 
is "from everlasting to everlasting ;" as man, he "was 
made under the law, and became obedient unto death." 
Innocent in all his life, "holy, harmless, separate from 
sinners and undefiled in the way," he was able to offer 
himself as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. He was 
both the "apostle and high priest of our profession," 
and the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world." In the apocalyptic vision he appears to the 
beloved disciple standing in the midst of the throne 
"a Lamb as it had been slain," and before him the four 
and twenty elders fall down, singing the new song, 



Christian Science. 191 

'Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the 
seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed 
us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and 
tongue and people and nation/' 

That these teachings of the Scriptures are full of 
mystery has never been denied. "Without contro- 
versy, great is the mystery of godliness : God was 
manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of 
angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the 
world, received up into glory." But notwithstanding 
the mystery involved in his incarnation and also in his 
redeeming work, our Lord is represented as the only 
hope of fallen humanity. "There is none other name 
under heaven given among men whereby we may be 
saved." Only in him and through him can a guilty 
sinner find pardon, purity and eternal blessedness. 
Having died for our sins, he has ascended to the right 
hand of the Father, and now "ever liveth to make in- 
tercession for us." He will be the central figure in 
that awful solemnity spoken of in the Scriptures as 
the "judgment of the last day." He himself has fore- 
told the part he will play, the words he will utter, the 
awards he will render; and John in his vision sees 
before him all the myriads of the dead being "judged 
out of those things which were written in the books, 
according to their works." It is his word which en- 
courages the saint who is fighting the good fight of 
faith: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit 
with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and 
am set down with my Father on his throne." To him 
has been given "a name above every name, that at the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow, and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
the glory of God the Father." He is the Alpha and 



192 Christian Science. 

the Omega of Christian doctrine and of Christian 
hope. 

Mrs. Eddy, however, denies the divinity, the aton- 
ing death, and even the personal immortality of the 
Man of Nazareth ! She holds that he was merely a 
model man, and that he was not, in any sense impos- 
sible to others, a Son of God. Rev. Frank E. Mason, 
one of her students, in his Reminiscences of the Class 
Room, reports her as explicitly denying the divinity 
of Christ, and as affirming that our Christian wor- 
ship is idolatry, in these words : 

Jesus was able to do the works that he did because his idea 
of God was so grand and noble. This lofty conception of 
divinity permeated his consciousness, and he reflected the 
greatest power of any man who ever lived simply because his 
aspirations were the highest. — p. I. 

He was only a man, with a "lofty conception of 
divinity !" 

This is broader than the broadest Unitarianism. 
Dr. Channing himself would have repudiated such 
doctrine as contrary to the plainest teachings of the 
Scriptures. Says that great Unitarian preacher: 

Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom 
could I have learned the essence of divine perfection, as 
from him who was in a peculiar sense the son, representa- 
tive and image of God — who was especially an incarnation 
of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other 
teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being 
with that filial spirit which forms the happiness of my fel- 
lowship with him? From other seers I might have heard of 
heaven ; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, 
dwelling actually upon earth, what a new comprehension 
have I of that better world ! And when at last I see him 
returning through a life and death of all-enduring devoted- 



Christian Science. [93 

to those pure mansions of the blessed, how much nearer 
arc thgy brought to me! What a new power does futurity 

thus associated with Jesus exert upon the mind! 

Nowhere in all that Mrs. Eddy and her school have 
written about him can be found a tribute to him that 
indicates such exalted faith in Christ our Saviour as 
that which hreathes through these words of Channing. 
( Observe the following from Mr. Mason's notes of 
Mrs. Eddy's lectures: 

Jesus the Christ is the ideal man. The physical embodi- 
ment was but the material manifestation of the ideal man. 
This material manifestation modern Christianity has deified, 
and by so doing has lost the ideal, worshipping a man after 
the similitude of the flesh rather than the Creator, which is 
wholly spiritual. — Reminiscences of Class Room, p. 13. 

If this means anything, it means that modern Chris- 
tians worship the body of Jesus, and do not worship 
the Creator ! Can anybody believe this monstrous 
falsehood ? 

Again, on pages 56 and 57 of the Rostrum, we find 
these words : 

The blunder of the world is in assuming and supposing 
that the Man of Galilee possessed power in excess of the 
residue of mankind. . . . Such an ignoble conception of 
deity travesties justice and equality. ... A God . . . 
can have no favorites. . . . Jesus possessed no power in 
excess of yourself. . . . The Christ-Mind belongs to the 
universe. It is the generic mind of man. All can assimilate 
it. It is not the specific mind of the Nazarene. . . . God 
has no specific son. Man is the son of God. 

Which is to say, Jesus was the Son of God only in 
the same sense in which any other man may count 
himself the son of God. 



194 Christian Science. 

Again, in the Rostrum, page 101, the same writer 
declares that "Christ is the image of man, made in the 
likeness of God," and that "a like conception, that is, 
the same mind in us that was also in him, transforms 
us into the Christ of the God-Mind, full of grace and 
truth." 

This goes beyond the hope of the apostles. John, 
we suppose, voices their expectation when he says, 
"When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we 
shall see him as he is." Mrs. Eddy and Mr. Mason 
agree that we shall be transformed into the Christ, 
which is to say, absorbed into his essence. Of this pe- 
culiar doctrine we shall have something further to say. 

From of old, theological cranks have tried to iden- 
tify Melchizedec with Christ. Mrs. Eddy attempts 
a more startling identification. The first man was not 
Adam, according to this inspired teacher, but the man 
Jesus in a previous incarnation! 

It was the antedated state of the meek and mighty Naza- 
rene, his life, truth and love spiritual, that antidoted die ills 
of the flesh and were the first man; it was Jesus, as he ex- 
pressed himself. Before Abraham was, I am. — Christian 
Science Scries, No. 4. p. 9. 

Since Christ was only a Buddha — or, to use the 

phrase of modern Theosophy, with which evidently 
Mrs. Eddy is in full accord in her entire doctrinal 
system — an adept, or mahatma, which any one else 
may become by proper effort, it follows that he is 
not in any sense the Saviour of men. He was a great 
teacher, and a great martyr to truth. He was cru- 
cified, according to Airs. Eddy, because his "scientific 
definition of personality " incensed the Pharisees. 1 

1 Science and Health, p. 259. 



Christian Science. 195 

He was an ideal man — that is, to a considerable ex- 
tent — but nothing more. He had no gift of power 
or grace that did not belong equally to the whole race, 
and can do nothing for us. Each man is his own 
saviour, and saves himself by imitating, not too 
closely, the example and character of Christ. 

The notion of a vicarious atonement, according to 
"scientific" theology, is only "the creation of a senti- 
ment j" 1 and the death of Christ effects nothing save 
for our instruction. Says the Rev. Frank E. Mason, 
who has been privileged to drink deep from the Pie- 
rian springs of Mrs. Eddy's teaching : 

Jesus is the model man over whom we throw the various 
garments of thought to study their effects ; and the privilege 
is granted each child of God to select the garment which is 
most becoming. In this sense only is Jesus our Saviour and 
Redeemer ; not vicariously and by substitution, but by pois- 
ing before us as a model to instruct us in the nature and 
character of thoughts and their effects upon man, to save us 
from suffering by donning only those garments that clothed 
him with joy, and by refusing to be arrayed in the habili- 
ments which bring sorrow and pain. — Seed, April, 1892. 

This account of the work of Christ, and especially 
of his agony on the cross, is not only ungrammatical, 
but it differs somewhat from the doctrine of our Lord 
and of his apostles. He himself told his disciples that 
"it behooved him to suffer and to rise from the dead, 
that repentance and remission of sin should be 
preached in his name among all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem. " And from the Epistle to the Hebrews we 
learn that "for the joy that was set before him he en- 
dured the cross, despising the shame." But, according 



1 Rostrum, January, 1895, p. 56. 



196 Christian Sciexce. 

to Mr. Mason and his new prophetess, all this was a 
foolish performance, quite unnecessary and unbecom- 
ing! Christ saves us by posing before us, after the 
fashion of a clothier's dummy or a milliner's model, 
and from his very unsatisfactory experience, as we be- 
hold him arrayed in the various "habiliments" of his 
sometimes erroneous thought, we may learn what 
garments of thought to don for ourselves ! This, for 
example, is one of the lessons of the crucifixion : "No- 
thing is gained by suffering for the truth. It is sim- 
ply a sentimental patriotism so to believe. Suffering 
is not an essential quota of the divine plan of salva- 
tion." — Ibid. 

Jesus, then, was only a sentimental patriot ! He 
was ignorant of the fact that suffering was not an 
essential "quota" — whatever Mr. Mason may mean 
by that — of the plan of salvation! It was a foolish 
blunder when an apostle wrote: "It became him for 
whom all things were made, in bringing many sons 
unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation per- 
fect through suffering." Nay, rather, the Man of 
Xazareth ought by all means to have avoided the 
"habiliments which bring sorrow and pain." There 
have been saints in every age since Calvary who have 
been attracted toward Jesus because he "bore our 
griefs and carried our sorrows ;" because he was 
"touched with the feeling of our infirmities," and 
was, alike in the sadness of his lot and in the perfect 
sympathy of his two-fold nature, "a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief." But to Mrs. Eddy and 
her inspired school of interpreters, the story of the 
sufferings of Christ is one which excites in them no- 
thing more than a feeling of compassionate superi- 
ority. He ought to have known better; but "at the 



Christian Science. 197 

time when Jesus felt our infirmities he had not," as 

he should have done long before, "conquered all the 
beliefs of the flesh !" He had not yet "risen to his 
final demonstration of spiritual power." 1 It was 
through sheer weakness and ignorance that the Man 
of Xazareth suffered, and all the scriptures which rep- 
resent that suffering as a part of the divine plan for 
the redemption of sinners must be set aside, because 
Mrs. Eddy knows more about the matter than 
prophets and apostles did, or even than Jesus himself. 
With her accustomed diffidence — a diffidence which 
ean only be considered bewitching in a "Scientist" 
who has made such "a sacred discovery" and a proph- 
etess w r ho announces herself as the recipient of a new 
and final revelation from heaven — this woman "clad 
with the radiance of spiritual Truth" differs both from 
"erudite theology" and from Spiritualism. The pur-^ 
pose of the crucifixion w r as not, she says, to provide "a 
ready pardon for all sinners who ask for it, and are 
willing to be forgiven." Xo ! This teaching of "eru- 
dite theology," — which we can see at a glance is fairly 
and accurately stated ! — must be thrown overboard, 
and we must pity the orthodox simpletons w T ho allows 
their ministers to preach such a gospel. Nor, again, 
was the death of Christ "necessary for the presenta- 
tion, after death, of the material Jesus, as a proof that 
spirits can return to earth." There was no special 
need, in her opinion, that "life and immortality" 
should be brought to light through the gospel. "The 
efficacy of the crucifixion lies in the practical affection 
and goodness it demonstrated for mankind." Still 
further, Christ "proved by his deeds" — amazing 

1 Science and Health. 



198 Christian Science. 

thought ! — "that Christian Science destroys sin, sick- 
ness and death!" (Science and Health, pp. 329, 330.) 
"Only this, and nothing more!'' 

The seer of Concord goes even further in her efforts 
to minimize the importance of the death of Jesus, and 
in so doing administers wholesale correction and re- 
buke to such ignorant theologians and preachers as 
was Paul, and to all in our own time who are so fatu- 
ous as to consider Paul good authority in matters of 
Christian doctrine, and even to the Man of Nazareth 
himself ! Redemption by the blood of Jesus is the 
key-note of the Xew Testament, as it was the mean- 
ing of the whole Levitical system and the burden of 
Old Testament prophecy. Under the Mosaic econ- 
omy it was a principle of the divine law that "without 
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins." The 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, if not Paul him- 
self, is at least Pauline in his teaching as to the rela- 
tion of our Lord's sacrifice to the pardon of sin. He 
refers to this principle of the old law as prophetic of 
the new dispensation, and grounds the believer's bold- 
ness as he enters into the holiest, in the fact that the 
blood of Jesus was shed for the sins of his people. 
The reprobate, according to him, deserves a condem- 
nation worse than death, because "he hath trodden 
under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the 
blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, 
an unholy tiling, and hath done despite unto the 
Spirit of grace." But evidently this primitive Chris- 
tian writer had not been privileged to "peck his shell 
open with Christian Science." With her usual malice 
in misrepresenting orthodoxy, Mrs. Eddy speaks as 
if the Christian world thought that somehow the blood 
of Christ was to be smeared on the sinner, and that 



Christian Science. 199 

God would be delighted with the smell of it, and 
would be "appeased by suffering." Desiring to cor- 
rect such a heathenish notion, she informs us oracu- 
larly that the "material blood of Jesus was no more 
efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed on 
the 'accursed tree' than when it was flowing in his 
veins as he went daily about his Father's business." 
(Page 330.) In other words, the shedding of his 
blood was unnecessary, and sinners could have been 
cleansed without it. How she reaches this conclusion 
will appear when we come to consider her teachings 
as to sin, pardon, and atonement. 

But these glaring and deliberate contradictions of 
hoh' writ are not to be wondered at when we remem- 
ber that in Mrs. Eddy's scheme all suffering is illu- 
sory. If we consider the sufferings of Jesus to have 
been real, we might properly consider our own suf- 
ferings real : and if his sufferings were illusions, they 
could have been, and ought to have been, avoided. 
This is the only logical conclusion from Mrs. Eddy's 
general principle of the "Allness of God and the no- 
thingness of matter." Thus has the "Christian Scien- 
tist" reached a height of heavenly contemplation from 
which he can look down in pity upon the folly and 
weakness of the poor sense-ridden, suffering Naza- 
rene! 

Still another way to discredit the sufferings of 
Christ is suggested by the female Pope of Christian 
Scientism. If he suffered — and the if in such a con- 
nection is significant of her exceeding doubt as to the 
reality of any suffering on his part — his sufferings 
must have been caused by the thought or mental in- 
fluence of others. "If Jesus suffered," she says, "it 
must have been from the mentality of others." {Unity 



200 Christian Science. 

of Good, p. 70.) That is to say, the agony in the gar- 
den, the scourging and the crown of thorns, the buf- 
feting and the shame, and even the torture of the cru- 
cifixion, with the hiding of the Father's face, all were 
created by the mentality of others ; and, however real 
to him in the seeming, were nothing but hypnotic illu- 
sions ! 

In similar fashion does our new infallibility deal 
with the death and resurrection of Christ. In Chris- 
tian theology, as understood by Catholic Christendom, 
these great facts of the mediatorial work of Christ 
play a most important part. But Mrs. Eddy and her 
followers have learned how to view them quite differ- 
ently. Thus, Mrs. Eddy tells us that "in Science, 
Christ never died. In sense, Jesus died and lives 
again. The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he 
did not. Mortal sense ... is all than can be buried 
or resurrected." — Unity of Good, p. 78. 

This is a very characteristic passage. The average 
reader will find here, being accustomed to use words 
in their sense as determined by common usage, a med- 
ley of contradictions. In science, Christ never died. 
In sense, Jesus did die. But, no! he only seemed to 
die, while in fact he did not : it was his "mortal 
sense" that died. And we venture to say that almost 
any practical man, coming to this passage in his first 
attempt to read the wandering dissertations of the 
oracle of Concord will determine in his haste that 
there is no "mortal sense" in Mrs. Eddy or in her 
doctrine, and lay the book down in disgust. But we 
must remember that Mrs. Eddy is speaking i n a "new 
tongue," and that her oracles require to be studied. 
Here is the meaning of this parable : when she speaks 
of Christ, she does not always mean the Man of Xaza- 



Christian Science. 201 

roth. It was, she holds, not the Christ, but Jesus, who 
died, that is, "in sense," or in appearance; and so, 
likewise, he seemed to rise from the dead. But his 
resurrection was also an illusion, since death, like sin 
and sickness, is simply a belief of mortal mind — 
a mere passing fancy. Since, then, there is no such 
thing as death or resurrection, and, further, since no 
man's body is a reality, but is only the imagination of 
himself and of mankind, it is, "scientifically" speak- 
ing, incorrect to speak of Christ as dying, etc. He 
had no body, and "Soul cannot die." All that men 
beheld of him, all that died or was raised from the 
dead, w r as his mortal sense, or, in other words, that 
phantom form to which men, imagining it to be real, 
gave the name of Jesus. 

Mr. Mason reiterates the teaching of Mrs. Eddy 
somewhat more coherently : "We affirm that he was 
alive during the three days, despite the fact that he 
was pronounced dead." — Reminiscences of Class 
Room, p. 5. 

This might be understood as implying that the 
death of Christ was only a suspension of animation ; 
what it means is that the death of Christ w r as only an 
appearance, inasmuch as there is no death. Again, 
"The only tomb in which Jesus lay w r as the world's 
physical apprehension of him." — Ibid. 

This statement need not be wondered at. It is no- 
thing more than we should expect of people so "scien- 
tific" that they count the sun and moon and stars 
as "subjective states of the human thought," and 
nothing more — held only, as Mrs. Eddy tells us the 
baby's worms are held, in the minds of those who look 
upon them! 

But Mrs. Eddy goes even further in her determina- 



202 Christian Science. 

tion to idealize our Lord and his redeeming work. 
Her expressions, when speaking of his birth, seem 
deliberately intended to cast doubt upon the genuine- 
ness of his humanity. She refers to Mary as the 
"reputed" mother of Jesus, and says that he "wore in 
part a human form, that is, as it appeared to mortal 
view, being conceived by" — this term is especially 
suitable for her purpose here, because of its double 
meaning — "a human mother." (Science and Health, 
p. 211.) She means that he was conceived in Mary's 
mind, and was her idea! Her "conception of him 
was spiritual" (page 228), not physical. She was 
thus, in fact, his creator, her mind having projected 
him upon the world ! Thus again : 

The illumination of Mary's spiritual sense put to silence 
material law, and brought forth her child by the revelation of 
Truth, demonstrating God as the Father of man. The Holy 
Ghost, or Divine Spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the 
virgin-mother with the full recognition that Being is Spirit. 
The Christ dwelt forever as an ideal in the bosom of the 
Principle of the man Jesus, and woman perceived this idea, 
though at first faintly developed in an infant form. 
Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conseious communion 
with God. — pp. 334-*5. 1 

Thus has she taught that he was an idea Christ, and 
that his birth, passion, death and resurrection were 
imaginary. 

Just now we caught a glimpse of another peculiar 
doctrine. Jesus himself is declared in the Scriptures 

1 It is, of course, a mere coincidence that in a similar way 
Simon Magus accounted for the existence of Helena, his 
paramour. She was. he said, the first conception QEwnatyof 
his mind. — Vide Encyclopedia Brittanica, article "Gnosti- 
cism." 



Christian Science. 203 

to be the Christ of God. When he challenged his dis- 
ciples to say who he was, Peter answered, "Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living* God." Mrs. Eddy, 
to whom all mysteries are plain, and the faith of 
prophets and apostles no more important than the 
vagaries of ignorant children, does not hesitate, in this 
case, to correct Peter and all catholic Christendom. 
She would have us believe that it was a mistake to 
consider Jesus the Christ. He was, she says, not the 
Christ. He was only "a material manifestation" in 
which the Christ dwelt. And she has given to "the 
Christ" the unscriptural, but charmingly "scientific" 
name of "the Christ-Principle," and speaks of that also 
as "the Principle of the man Jesus." Bearing in mind 
her definition of God as Principle, Mind, etc., and her 
statement as reported by Mr. Mason, that "the Christ- 
Mind belongs to the universe," and is "the generic 
mind of man," it is evident that she denies the spe- 
cific divinity of our Lord by claiming it for the whole 
race. Of this also, more anon. 

Again, Mrs. Eddy differs from the angel who ap- 
peared to comfort the disciples after the ascension of 
Christ. He said, "This same Jesus, which is taken up 
from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner 
as ye have seen him go into heaven." Possibly she 
regards the story of this angel's appearance and mes- 
sage as a myth. At any rate she does not believe a 
word of the account. "The Christ," she says, speak- 
ing ex cathedra, infallible, "dw T elt forever in the 
bosom of the Father, God," and "this dual person- 
ality, of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and ma- 
terial, the Christ and Jesus, continued until the Mas- 
ter's ascension, when the human, the corporeal con- 
cept, or Jesus, disappeared ; while his invisible self, 



204 Christian Science. 

or Christ, continued to exist," etc. (page 229). This 
antithesis is significant. The term disappeared is op- 
posed to the term continued to exist ; and the meaning 
is evidently that the humanity of Jesus, which she 
expresses by "the human, or corporeal concept," was 
annihilated ! It was nothing but an appearance, or 
idea; and that appearance ceased — that idea was no 
longer entertained among men ! The hope of the 
church, expressed in that precious Epistle of John, 
that "when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for 
we shall see him as he is," was all wrong. Angels, 
ministers of grace, apostles or prophets, who assert 
such doctrine must stand corrected by this woman 
who sees herself in prophecy as "clothed with the 
sun, and the moon under her feet." 

But, notwithstanding her denial of the immortality 
of Jesus, Mrs. Eddy would not leave us altogether 
comfortless. There is a sense in which we may still 
realize his presence and power. From The Seed 
(April, 1890) we learn, as its editor has learned from 
Mrs. Eddy, that the "only right understanding of 
Jesus" is gained through the recognition of Christ as 
"the ever-present consciousness of true manhood." 
and that when Jesus died, he "diffused his thought 
through the universe, and this thought is the leaven 
which will leaven the whole lump." This thought, 
too, no doubt, is the leaven which Mrs. Eddy has hid- 
den in her three measures of meal. "The realization 
of Truth is the Christ-Principle working within, for 
he said. 'I am with you, even unto the end of the 
world.' " We are thus emphatically and repeatedly 
forbidden to believe in the immortality of the Man of 
( ialilee. He is now only — 

"The sweel presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion evermore intense." 



Christian Science. 205 

He is in) longer, in his blessed person, our Master. 
Our only Master, says Mrs. Eddy, is "a Master 

thought which possesses the mind of each individual." 
(Reminiscences of Class Room, p. 8.) Nor will the 
blessed Redeemer appear at last in the midst of the 
throne, "a Lamb as it had been slain." Nay, verily, 
since " 'the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins 
of the world' is the sense of individual dominion . . . 
the inward consciousness of perfection, which lifts us 
slowly above the claims of matter, to the realization 
that Mind is all." {Seed, April, 1890, p. 98.) Sal- 
vation, according to our new oracle, as we have seen, 
is nothing but complete acquiescence in the teachings 
of her new creed. The passage just quoted indicates 
the Christian Science way of salvation clearly. It is 
to make a Christ of one's own self-conceit, and follow 
its suggestions until the "inward consciousness of 
perfection" develops into the assurance of "oneness 
with God." In all which heresy borders close on 
lunacy. 

But what explanation will Mrs. Eddy give of the 
second advent? The apostles taught that our Lord 
would "appear the second time without sin unto sal- 
vation." With his second coming they associated the 
resurrection of the just, and the beginning of the 
saints' everlasting rest. They expected it to occur "in 
the end of the world," or aeon, of which the ministry 
of Christ was the commencement. Peter declared that 
those who should remain until the coming of the Lord 
should be "caught up with" the saints "in the air," as 
they came with their Lord back to earth. But Mrs. 
Eddy is better informed. She has been taught of 
God, and now teaches us, that Jesus has already come 
the second time, and that his second coming dates 



2o6 Christian Science. 

from the year 1866, and was simply the advent of 
"Christian Science!" And as she herself is the sole 
author of that blessed system, which is the "outgrowth 
and epitome" of her life, we may say that Mrs. Eddy 
herself is, for all practical purposes — and Christian 
Science is "so practical'' — Christ returned to earth ! 
She has gathered up his diffused thought, and — at 
least until she discontinued healing — was so full of its 
aroma that she was omnipotent to heal all human ills, 
barring only broken bones, and a few other maladies, 
which it were prudence in a Christian Scientist not so 
much as to name! — Vide Science and Health, p. 43. 

Matthew, Mark and Luke all report their Lord as 
declaring that he would come "in the clouds with 
great power and glory," and Matthew and Mark re- 
port his statement that he would "send his angels 
with a great sound of a trumpet," and that they should 
".gather together his elect from the four winds, from 
one end of heaven to the other." Mrs. Eddy, indeed, 
did not make her appearance in the clouds, but only in 
the midst of Xew England fog, literal and spiritual ; 
but we have seen that she has, at least among her wor- 
shippers, great power and glory, and we hear the 
sound of her trumpet as she seeks to gather the elect 
into the true gospel fold of the "Church of Christ, 
Scientist." Minute discrepancies between the august 
prophecy and its alleged fulfilment in this feminine 
Theophany will by no means discourage those credu- 
lous people who have had their ailments cured, and 
who are therefore ready to receive Mrs. Eddy's teach- 
ings as the "voice of Truth to this age," and worship 
her as the "Feminine Principle of the Messianic Ex- 
pectation." — Vide Arena, May, 1899. 

The worship of our Lord Jesus Christ is, of course, 



Christian Science. 207 

out of the question for those who believe his human- 
ity was only a temporary phantom, and that they 
themselves can claim to be divine as he. This logical 
result oi Airs. Eddy's reasoning brings her theory 
into sharp contrast with the gospel as taught by our 
Lord and his apostles. He exists now as diffused 
thought, and who ever heard of worshipping thought? 
We may no longer look back to Calvary, and behold- 
ing him whom our sins have pierced, cry in adoring 
love — 

Oh, Lamb of God ! was ever pain, 
Was ever love like thine? 

The old gospel was all a mistake, a foolish misunder- 
standing of God. Paul and John and all the rest of 
the New Testament writers, and, of course, all the Old 
Testament writers also, were men who meant well, 
and testified as best such ignorant men could in the 
midst of barbarous ages, that were not yet illumined 
by the 'light of Science. " But they were as blind 
leading the blind. Only since a new revelation was 
vouchsafed to the anointed woman, the Mental Mes- 
siah, of this age, have mortals been taught the whole 
truth — the truth, as Mrs. Eddy boldly affirms, as it 
was not in Jesus. The Man of Nazareth did w r rong 
to accept the worship of his disciples, and all who 
have been worshipping him through the ages have 
been guilty of idolatry ! The whole Christian world 
has gone wrong. The blind man, when he was healed ; 
the entire company of the disciples, overwhelmed as 
they were by the triumphant demonstration of his 
Messiahship afforded by a splendid series of miracles ; 
Peter, after the miraculous draught of fishes ; the 
multitude gathered to witness the ascension ; the com- 
pany assembled in that upper chamber where the 



208 Christian Science. 

glories of Pentecost began; the martyr, Stephen, as 
his soul was departing, and he — doubtless deluded, 
according to Mrs. Eddy's way of thinking — imagined 
he saw the Son of man at the right hand of the Fa- 
ther; Paul, as his epistles abundantly show; the 
early church, which "in every place" called on the 
name of our Lord Jesus Christ ; Catholic Christendom 
in all ages, which has sought to bring peculiar honors 
to our King — all have erred most egregiously. They 
have been worshipping a Saviour who was not only 
not divine, any more than other men are, but they 
have continued to worship him even after he had 
ceased to exist. Paul's prophecy, too, was false, when 
he predicted that at the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow and every tongue confess that he, Jesus, 
is the Christ, for Mrs. Eddy says he is not; and the 
application to Jesus, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, of 
the words of Messianic prophecy, "And let all the 
angels of God worship him," was a blunder. 

Xot only so, but when a Christian poet, paraphras- 
ing the testimony of the evangelical prophet, sings of 
Jesus — 

To him shall endless prayer be made, 
And endless praises crown his head, 
His name, like sweet perfume, shall rise 
With every evening sacrifice. — 

he is exhibiting gross ignorance. Mrs. Eddy sum- 
mons us from all such "worship of idols/' and would 
have us banish the very name of Jesus from our 
prayers. She is reported as saying that — 

"Worshipping the personal Jesus keeps the world on a phy- 
sical basis and in a physical belief, making such a religion 
largely emotional, while, on the contrary, the adoration of 



Christian Science. 209 

the Christ-Principle, which influenced Jesus in his demeanor, 
teaches us that we can be like him, and becomes an incen- 
tive to labor for such a glorious possibility. The impersonal 
Christ should be the only object of worship." — Reminiscences 
of Class Room, p. 5. 

We have seen her charge, that modern Christianity 
had deified the "material manifestation" of Christ. 
Now we have her advice not to worship his person. 
Why not, if it be not idolatrous in her opinion? The 
Apocalypse represents him as saying, "I am he that 
liveth, and was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever- 
more ;" but Mrs. Eddy teaches that his humanity does 
not now exist, his "duality" having ceased at the as- 
cension. If she is right, John is wrong, and the Chris- 
tian world is now praying to a Saviour who does not 
exist. Such worship was idolatrous in its origin, and 
is now worse than idolatrous, if the seer of Concord, 
X. H., has seen the truth ! 

The teachings of our oracle as to the Holy Spirit 
are much more clear and concise, though hardly less 
inconsistent,, than her teaching as to the character and 
work of Christ. She identifies the Holy Spirit now 
with Christ himself, and anon with her own precious 
doctrines. "Throughout all generations," she in- 
forms us, "the Christ as the spiritual idea — as the 
Holy Ghost, the Comforter, has come." (Science and 
Health, pp. 228-229.) And, lest we should fancy him 
to be a divine spirit, infinitely transcending the "dif- 
fused thought" of Jesus, she tells us further that "the 
Holy Ghost, or Spirit, reveals this triune Principle" of 
Life, Truth and Love, "and is expressed in Divine 
Science, which is the Comforter, leading into all Truth, 
and revealing the Divine Principle of the universe — 
universal and perpetual harmony" (page 227). Her 



210 Christian Science. 

doctrine, then, is both the second and third persons or 
entities in that "triune Principle" which she wor- 
ships ; it is both the Christ, or "spiritual idea," and 
the Holy Comforter promised by our Lord ! This 
must be so, since it is a mathematical axiom that 
things which are equal to the same thing are equal to 
each other. 

And, inasmuch as she has taught us that the Christ 
is the only proper object of worship, and that this 
Christ appears in "Divine Science," it follows of neces- 
sity that the only proper object of worship for man- 
kind is Christian Science ! Other people worship 
their God ; Christian Scientists must needs worship 
their religion ! 

Thus does she make manifest the fact that the words 
which she puts into the mouth of "Mortal Sense" in 
one of her profound allegories are an unwitting de- 
claration of her own fallibility: "Like an airy bubble, 
I but expand to my own destruction, and shine with 
the fatal resplendency of error." 

It is just a little singular that our inspired author 
was not satisfied with this specimen of sparkling and 
iridescent rhetoric. With a few notable exceptions 
it was the most beautiful and striking sentence in any 
of the older editions of Science and Health. But in 
the one hundred and fifty-fourth edition she makes 
it, if possible, even more impressively, though none the 
less unconsciously, prophetic: "Like bursting lava, I 
but expand to my own despair, and shine with the 
resplendency of doom." — p. 148. 

Yes, Mrs. Eddy still shines, still expands, and still 
expects to explode; but shrinking from destruction, 
she finds expansion tending to despair, and her re- 
splendency is still fatal — the sure foretoken of doom. 



Christian Science. 21 \ 

Even in describing her own (and our) "mortal 
sense" she feels that there is something real and sub- 
stantial about all this unreality. "An airy bubble" is 
too light, too cool and too transient to describe her 
mighty spirit, even under such an alias. Her "mor- 
tal sense" is volcanic in its fiery splendor, and, like 
bursting lava in its majestic upheavals, rushes madly 
to its fearful fate ! 



XV. 

THE GOSPEL OF NO GOSPEL. 

Having exhibited the affinities of Mrs. Eddy's sys- 
tem with Pantheism in its teaching as to the being and 
attributes of God, let us now inquire, What does she 
teach as to the origin, nature, moral status, and final 
destiny of man ? And what has she to say of angels 
and demons? 

Having, in the primary postulate of her system, 
made God the sum of all things, it would be impos- 
sible for Mrs. Eddy to consider man less than divine. 
But upon the threshold of this inquiry, we must pause 
and ask, What does Mrs. Eddy mean by the term, 
man? Is it, in her new tongue, as it is in common 
parlance, a word which stands both for the race and 
for any individual of it? She says not. In one of her 
publications she declares that when she uses the term 
man she means by it just what a certain Methodist 
bishop meant when he said in a lecture, "Nobody has 
ever seen man." And yet, as will be seen, she finds 
herself unable to maintain this distinction between the 
race, which, in its totality, no man has ever seen or 
can see, and the individual man ; and her statements 
as to man are liable to be misunderstood on almost 
every page of her writings by being received as re- 
ferring to individual men. But when her words are 
carefully weighed, it is found that she means to teach 
that the race is one great universal being, and that 
she purposely avoids every term which might imply 
that what she says of man is true of all men. 



('n rist] \.\ Science. 21 3 

following arc sonic of her statements concern- 

m : 

1 1 should be well understood that all men have one Mind, 
one God and Father, one Life, Truth and Love. Mankind 
will become perfect in proportion as this becomes apparent, 
and the true brotherhood of Man will thus be established. 
Having no other gods, turning to no other mind but the one 
perfect Intelligence to guide him, Man is the likeness of God, 
pure and eternal, having that Mind which was also in Christ. 
— Science and Health, p. 463. 

Man was and is God's idea, even the infinite expression of 
Infinite Mind, and co-existent and co-eternal with that Mind. 
Man has been forever in the eternal Mind, God. . . Man's 
consciousness and individuality are reflections of God . . . 
the emanations of Him who is Life, Truth and Love. — Ibid., 
p. 231. 

Man is . . . the compound idea of God, including all 
right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image 
and likeness ; the conscious identity of Being, as found in 
Science, where Man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and 
therefore is eternal ; that which has no separate Mind from 
God. — Ibid., p. 471. 

These statements exemplify again the utter worth- 
lessness of Mrs. Eddy's disclaimer as to Pantheism. 
It is impossible for her words to be understood in any 
other than a pantheistic sense. Man is, she says, not 
God himself, but only his eternal idea. But, never- 
theless, Man has no separate mind from God. His 
intelligence is none other than the Divine intelligence. 
In him resides the "conscious identity of Being." 
That is, the only consciousness which God has of his 
own identity is found in the consciousness of man. 
In such statements she holds out to her followers the 
intoxicating thought that they themselves are not 
merely temples of the Holy One, but that all their 



214 Christian Science. 

thoughts are, in fact, God's thoughts, and that the 
only soul which anybody has is God himself. He is 
the Ego: that which says, "I" or "Us" in every hu- 
man being is nothing less than the Spirit of the Eter- 
nal, conscious of its own identity. 

How this doctrine affects some people, we may 
learn from Mrs. Woodbury: 

On all hands are victims believing themselves to be 'as 
gods.' Estrangement in families, discords in the home circle, 
bitter alienations from pastors and churches, are inevitable 
results from such mal-teaching and mal-practice, while cases 
of ensuing insanity are not rare. — Christian Science Voices, 
P- 142. 

It is true that Mrs. Woodbury is here speaking, not 
of Christian Science as she then understood it, and as 
she supposed Mrs. Eddy to teach it, but of certain 
other "ambitious teachers of the people, deluded by 
egotism and flattery from their blind followers," 
whom she represents as engaged in the work of dis- 
seminating "spurious adulterations of Christian heal- 
ing." But such doctrine as that just now quoted from 
Mrs. Eddy herself is precisely adapted to induce in- 
sanity and all the other difficulties named, simply be- 
cause of its tendency to make people count themselves 
"as gods." Let any man become possessed with this 
thought, "My intelligence is God's intelligence, my 
consciousness is his," and he will speedily conclude 
that his thoughts are in fact God's thoughts, and that 
in all his life he is acting and speaking by divine in- 
spiration. Is not the man who is laboring under such 
a delusion already fit for the insane asylum? * 

1 Since the above was written a friend writes me that quite 
recently there was in the State Hospital for the Insane at 



Christian Science, 215 

Mrs. Eddy, however, would have us keep ourselves 
humble ; and hence this bit of sublimated idealism and 
"scientific" humility, "Think of thyself as the orange 

just eaten, of which only the pleasant idea is left." — 
mce and Healthy p. 277. 

Just why, we are not told, unless it be because Man 
is not substantial, but only an idea ! This is predi- 
cating a very shadow r y existence, indeed, for that ex- 
alted being of whom we have been told that in him 
resides the "conscious identity" of God ! 

At this point, we notice another of the many ab- 
surdities of our "scientific" reasoner. The Scriptures 
tell us (Romans viii. 9, and sundry other passages) 
that God dwells in his children. This, however, is 
one of the texts quoted by her, without any attempt 
to explain or translate it into the "new tongue" of 
Christian Science. Having defined man as God's idea, 
she is driven to keep up somehow^ the distinction be- 
tween God and his own thoughts. Hence the follow- 

Morganton, N. C, a patient whose trouble was caused by 
becoming a convert to Christian Science, and sends me the 
following, clipped from the Philadelphia Medical Record of 
March 4, 1899 : 

"Indignity to a Christian Scientist. — A Christian Science 
healer was recently committed in a police court here for ex- 
amination as to her sanity because she expressed the con- 
viction that Mrs. Eddy, the plutocratic founder of the de- 
lusion, was God. As Mrs. Eddy claims to have cured caries, 
tuberculosis, cancer, 'tuberculous diphtheria,' and a host of 
other trifling ailments of the sort, by just thinking, it seems 
natural enough for anybody who believes her to believe also 
that she is the Supreme Being. The healer just committed 
is no more insane than her associates; she is only more logi- 
cal." 



216 Christian Science. 

ing remarkable denial of the doctrine of God's im- 
manence in his creation : "God is the only Life, and 
life is no more in the forms which express it than Sub- 
stance is in its shadow/' — Science and Health, p. 226. 
Again : 

Man reflects and expresses the Divine Substance or Mind ; 
but God is not in his reflection any more than man is in the 
mirror which reflects his image, or the sun is in the ray of 
light which goes out from it. — Ibid., pp. 196-'/. 

Her reasons for this denial are quite logical and 
conclusive. First, "If Life were in mortal man or in 
material things, it would be subject to their limita- 
tions and end in death." — Ibid., p. 226. How Life, 
which she regards as the only reality, could end in 
death, which she counts an unreality, she does not 
pause to explain. Second, "If he dwelt within what 
he creates, God would not be reflected, but absorbed," 
etc. — Ibid., p. 226. 

Her reason, it appears, for denying a very plain 
scripture, which she cannot by any possibility recon- 
cile with her philosophy, is simply to avoid cata- 
clysms and take care of the universe. A dead God, 
or one to whom his universe has become a fatal 
sponge to absorb or digest him, must not be tolerated 
in our thinking! We confess that quite as much as 
Mrs. Eddy herself do we repel all the "glittering au- 
dacity of diabolical and sinuous logic" 1 that would 
lead to such horrible conclusions. For this won- 
drously wise reductio ad absurdum — a feat of inspired 
intellect which, we venture to assert, is without a 
parallel in the writings of Paul, of Bacon, of Berkeley, 



! I r nity of Good, p. 68. 



Christian Science. 2\y 

or even of Mother (loose — Mrs. Eddy deserves the 
gratitude oi the race she came to save. 

Having shown us conclusively that God cannot be 
in his creation, it is quite as easy for Mrs. Eddy to 
show us that the scriptural account of the creation is 
all wrong. To this position her system forces her. 
if Alan is, and always was, God's idea, it follows that 
he was never created. If we devise any theory, upon 
the hasis of her teaching, that gives to the race a 
beginning, we fall into other cataclysms that are too 
horrible to contemplate. One is, that if man, God's 
only idea, ever had a beginning, then prior to that 
beginning God had no ideas ! Who could believe in 
an empty-headed, idiotic sort of a god, without ideas ? 
Again, since man's being is God's only identity, if 
there was ever a time when Man did not exist, God at 
that time had no identity ! Further, since in Man 
resides God's consciousness, if Man were ever created, 
prior to that creation God was unconscious ! Still 
again, if God had ideas he must have expressed them, 
in order to maintain his own existence ; " for," says 
our oracle, speaking with her usual lucidity, "God 
without the image and likeness of himself would be 
a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed." From all which 
reasoning it follows conclusively that if the Bible or 
any other book gives an account of the creation of 
man, .that account must be dismissed as mythical. 
Mrs. Eddy, being inspired beyond the prophets of the 
"Jewish tribal God, Jehovah," can make no such mis- 
takes as did Moses and his successors. 

Seeking to explain the biblical account of creation, 
so as to compel it to harmonize with her teaching as 
to the eternity of man, Mrs. Eddy takes advanced 
ground in a way well adapted to abash the whole 



218 Christian Science. 

world of "traditional theologians." She is not sat- 
isfied to interpret scripture by reversing its proposi- 
tions, or even by substituting, in certain passages, for 
the word which denies her precious doctrines, another 
which affirms it. When she comes to speak of crea- 
tion, she makes a dexterous movement, in keeping 
with the Napoleonic character of her genius, and puts 
herself in the very vanguard of the Higher Criticism. 
She discovers in the "latest conclusions" of "modern 
scholarship" abundant verifications of her teaching ! 
In fact, she captures the whole camp of the critics, and 
appears, as it were, in triumphal procession, dragging 
Drs. Driver, Cheyne, Briggs, et id omnc genus, cap- 
tive in her train ! And, with the conceded right of 
conquest, she proceeds to make such use of their 
stock in trade as suits the exigencies of her argument. 
These infallible critics are all agreed that, notwith- 
standing the fact, which they claim to have verified, 
that the account of creation, as given in Genesis, is a 
patchwork story made by dove-tailing two narratives 
together, there is truth in each story, whether it be 
considered mythical, poetical, or what not. But to 
Mrs. Eddy there is no beauty in one of them that she 
should admire it. She regards the first chapter of 
Genesis as all true and inspired, and also the first five 
verses of the second. But the story of Eden and the 
fall she finds all wrong, and all else connected with it. 
This second chapter of Genesis gives us, she has dis- 
covered, "a material view of God and the universe 
which is the exact opposite of scientific truth." It 
"chronicles man as mutable and mortal — as having 
broken away from Deity, and as revolving in an orbit 
of his own." This cannot be, since "existence, sep- 
arate from Deity, is impossible." It is also panthe- 



Christian Science. 219 

istic, teaching thai "Spirit cooperated with matter in 

creating man," winch, of course, is false! Besides; it 
it contradictory of the first, etc. Hence her efforts to 
explain this portion of the Bible are mainly efforts 
to show its falsity, and yet she seeks to make it at the 
same time a sort of allegory, teaching her doctrine. 
We give one specimen of her reasoning in the prem- 
ises: "Is Spirit, God, injected into dust, and eventu- 
ally ejected at the demand of matter? Does Spirit 
enter into dust, and lose therein the Divine nature and 
omnipotence?" — Science and Health, pp. 515, 517. 

Aside from the necessity of so explaining the Bible 
as to make it support her peculiar view of the dignity 
of man, as "God's eternal idea," there is another rea- 
son for the wrath in this celestial mind, burning, as it 
does, with steady glow, against the biblical account of 
man's creation and fall. That account of the origin of 
woman does not suit her. She has been commissioned 
to teach the world that "woman is the highest, species 
of Man," and she can in no wise admit the truth of a 
story which makes woman's subjection to man a part 
of the creative plan, and a fundamental law of human 
society. Accordingly, she indulges a scorn quite In- 
gersollian in her remarks upon the ancient myth, 
which she would fain effectually explode. In com- 
menting on Genesis ii. 21, she says: "Falsity, error, 
charges Truth, God, with inducing a hypnotic state 
in Adam, in order to perform a surgical operation 
on him, and thereby create a woman." — Ibid., p. 521. 
Following this refined and delicate piece of wit, she 
makes some jocular remarks upon surgery and ob- 
stetrics, as illustrated in this story of creation. 

But where did the various orders of created 
things come from ? Mrs. Eddy answers : "Beholding 



220 Christian Science. 

the creations of his own dream, and calling them real 
and God-given, Adam — alias error — gives them 
names. Afterwards, he becomes the basis of the crea- 
tion of woman and of his own kind, calling them man- 
kind." — Science and Health, p. 521. 

This is a marvelous account of creation. God was 
not the Creator of the visible universe ! Adam 
dreamed, and the objects first seen in his vision be- 
came the supposed realities of his waking hours ! He 
errs in calling them real and God-given ! Xot even 
the sun and the moon, as we have seen, are to be con- 
sidered as real things, but as subjective states of hu- 
man thought; and so likewise, "vertebrata, articulata, 
moUusca and radiata, are evolved by mortal and ma- 
terial thought." — Ibid., p. 548. 

Mrs. Eddy, in teaching that the real cause of all 
material tilings beside himself was the dream of 
Adam, comes perilously near the absurdities of Mor- 
monism, and, following the parabolic curve of her 
genius, goes beyond them. The Mormon hierarchy 
declares, with Brigham Young, that Adam is "the 
only God with whom we have to do, and that he 
helped to make and organize the world." According 
to Mrs. Eddy, Adam imagined it all, and all that now 
exists is but the outcome of his imagination, the work 
of which has been perhaps supplemented by the crea- 
tive fancies of successive generations. 

But who was Adam, and how did he come into be- 
ing? The reader of Mrs. Eddy's works will search in 
vain for a clear and unambiguous answer to this 
question. Having forsaken the teachings of God's 
own liook, she wanders in a fog whenever she touches 
the relation of the race to Adam, or Adam's relation 
to God. Her definition of the name Adam, in her 



Christian SCIENCE. 22] 

sary, which pretends to give the "spiritual sense" 
and also the "original meaning" of the terms therein 
defined, is the longest definition in the whole chapter. 
Evidently, Adam is a refractory subject. Abel's 
spiritual significance is explained "scientifically" in 
two lines, and Abraham's in five; but she labors 
through a whole page in trying to explain Adam ! 
She defines him as meaning — 

Error; a falsity; the belief in original sin, sickness and 
death ; evil ; the opposite of Good, or God,, and his creation ; 
a curse ; a belief in intelligent matter, finiteness and mortality ; 
"dust to dust"; red sandstone; the first god of mythology; 
not God's man, who represents the one God, and is his own 
image and likeness ; the opposite of Spirit and its creations ; 
that which is not the image and likeness of Good, but a 
material belief opposed to the one Mind, or Spirit ; a so- 
called finite mind, producing other minds, thus making "gods 
many and lords many" (i Cor. viii. 5) ; an unreality, as op- 
posed to the great reality of spiritual existence and creation; 
a so-called man, whose origin, substance and mind are sup- 
posed to be the opposite of God, or Spirit ; an inverted image 
of Spirit; the image and likeness of God's opposites — namely, 
matter, sin, sickness and death ; the antipodes of Truth, 
termed error ; the counterfeit of Life, which ultimates in 
death ; the opposite of Love, called hate ; the antipodes of 
Spirit's creation, called self-creative matter; Immortality's 
opposite, mortality ; that of which Wisdom saith, "Thou shalt 
surely die;" . . . the false supposition that Life is not 
eternal, but has beginning and end; that the Infinite enters 
the finite, Intelligence passes into non-intelligence, and Soul 
dwells in material sense ; that Immortal Mind results in mat- 
ter, and matter in mortal mind ; that the one God and Creator 
entered what he created, and then disappeared in the atheism 
of matter. — Science and Health, pp. 5/0-'i. 

This definition is a tremendous effort to get Adam 
out of the way. He is now a myth, and anon a mvth- 



222 Christian Science. 

ological god ; dust and red sandstone ; a false belief, 
which, on examination, is found to be simply a denial 
of Mrs. Eddy's infallibility; evil, which, as we shall 
see in a subsequent part of our examination, is the 
devil ; nor can it escape her shrewd intellect that in 
making the visible universe the creation of Adam's 
dream, she has, in her definition of Adam, made the 
devil the father of us all in very truth ! This is true, 
in her opinion, if we do not agree with her ! Adam is 
also an unreality, a "so-called man;" an "inverted 
image" of God, whatever that may mean ; and, in a 
word, the "false supposition'' that Christian Science is 
not a true gospel and an infallible revelation ! And 
yet we cannot fail to see that Mrs. Eddy's labored, 
tautological and self-contradictory definition is un- 
satisfactory to herself, as it must appear nonsensical 
to the "unscientific" reader. Why does she speak of 
him, a "so-called man," as being supposed to be the 
opposite of God, when she has plainly declared him 
to be the "antipodes" of Truth, which is one of her 
terms for the Divine Being? As nobody but herself 
ever imagined the unfallen Adam to be opposed to 
God, we can only understand from her confusion here 
that she has her own doubts as to her truthfulness in 
attempting what she so happily terms her "feeble 
revelation." 

Having exploded Adam — blowing him to the four 
winds with a definition of the most fulminating char- 
acter — Mrs. Eddy must needs provide a first man. 
If Adam was not the first man, who was? We have 
seen her answer to this question. It was Jesus in a 
previous state of existence. This she learns from his 
statement that he existed before Abraham, and having 
the universe at her disposal, she chooses to locate him 



Christian SCIENCE. 223 

Oil this planet. Just where and when he lived, what 
he did, besides antidoting the ills of the flesh, and 

whether he was a cotemporary of Adam or not, she 
has not informed us; nor, since she has finished her 
"feeble revelation." is there any reasonable proba- 
bility that she ever will. It is a passing pity that the 
only person in the world who possesses all this infor- 
mation should "disappear" without enlightening our 
ignorance. Adam was evil, a nonentity, and a myth ; 
but Jesus was the real primordial man. Did he marry 
some unchronicled Eve, and die childless ? Or did he 
share with Adam, that supposed man, in some way 
the paternity of the race? Are there two human 
races — one, that of enlightened spirits, or Scientists, 
sprung from Jesus in his first incarnation, and the 
other of common mortals, sprung from Adam, the 
evil, or devil? Or did Jesus live and die unmarried, 
achieving among the antediluvian mortals great repu- 
tation as a Science healer? These are important 
questions. Having told us so much, Mrs. Eddy ought 
to have told us more. She knows, having no mind 
but God, and being thus able to command the treas- 
ures of Omniscience. 

In this connection, the remarks of our new infalli- 
bility upon the name of Adam are interesting : "Adam 
is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying the red color 
of the ground, dust, nothingness. " — Science and 
Health, p. 223. 

This will surprise Hebraists of all calibres. The 
following, too, is another "ray of infinite Truth," as 
perceived bv our new prophetess, and is luminosity it- 
self: 

Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads a 
dam, or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something 



224 Christian Science. 

fluid, or mortal mind mixed in solution, of the darkness 
which seemed to appear when "darkness was upon the face of 
the deep" and matter stood as opposed to Spirit, as that which 
was accursed. Jehovah declared the ground — matter or earth 
— accursed, and from this earth or matter sprang Adam, al- 
though God had blessed the earth for man's sake. — Ibid., p. 
233- 

But really, does not this division of .Adam's name 
suggest rather the thought of a weak brain, laboring 
under the burden of infinite absurdity? of a "mortal 
mind" befogged with its own irrational theories? of 
the darkness which abides in the soul when the light 
of reason and of scriptural truth has been shut out, 
and a silly woman opposes her stupid vaporings to 
the plain utterances of the Divine Spirit? At any 
rate Mrs. Eddy's feat in cutting Adam's name in two 
is profoundly suggestive of her ability and originality 
as an expounder of scripture. Not to look farther, 
we find a startling proof that she possesses 

"Optics keen, 
To see what is not to he seen" 

in the inference which she deduces from her discus- 
sion and division of Adam's name : "From this it fol- 
lows that Adam was not the ideal man for whom the 
earth was blessed. The ideal man was revealed in 
due time, and known as Jesus the Christ." — Ibid., p. 

233- 

This is all we can gather from the new word of 
God as to the creation of Adam. He sprang out of 
the earth somehow, notwithstanding God had blessed 
it for man's sake; and the fact that Adam sprang 
out of the ground is proof positive that he was not 
the ideal man, the "man of God's creating." 



Christian Science. 225 

It is to be regretted that Mrs. Eddy does not tell 
US — it would have been so easy for one so richly in- 
spired to do so — how Adam got into the ground be- 
fore he sprang out of it, and where he was and what 
he was doing before he got into the ground. As she 
has not condescended to give us this important infor- 
mation, we are left to our own inferences. Adam, as 
we have seen, means nothingness; and the ground, 
being matter, is unreality or nothingness. So we see 
very plainly that the scriptural account of creation, as 
it opens under the light of ''Science/' means that 
nothingness got into nothingness, and then — we can 
readily imagine how easy it was — "sprang out of" it ! 
And it has been ever since springing out of itself and 
bamboozling its descendants, who are the people that 
will not believe in Airs. Eddy ! 

But how came Man, the infinite idea of the infinite 
God, perfect, co-existent and co-eternal with God, to 
be associated with Adam, that embodied falsity? 
Whence came "mortal mind" and all its train of illu- 
sions, such as the dream of human personality, the 
five senses, and the rest? We have in vain searched 
the pages of this new and only infallible revelation 
for any answer to these questions. The only clue to 
Airs. Eddy's views we can find is in her scattered re- 
marks upon man and mortals. In our common par- 
lance, to which all respectable writers conform, these 
terms are synonymous. But she has invented a "new 
tongue," which is an entirely original method of spir- 
itualizing, contradicting, dividing, allegorizing, or 
otherwise distorting plain Scripture, to make it bear 
some semblance of agreement with her doctrines. 
Hence, the need of a glossary, that the reader may 
understand passages in which she uses old words in 



226 Christian Science. 

a new sense. According to her vocabulary, Man 
stands for the spiritual man, the Idea of God, while 
the terms, mortal, mankind, and human, all stand for 
the illusory and transient phases of our life. Here is 
her account of "mortals" : 

Mortals will disappear, and immortals, or the children of 
God, will appear as the only and eternal verities of Man. 
Mortals are not fallen children of God. They never had a 
perfect state of being which may be regained. They were, 
from the beginning of human history, conceived in sin and 
brought forth in iniquity. Mortals are material falsities, 
. . . "without hope and without God in the world," . . . 
errors, made up of sin, sickness, and death, which must dis- 
appear, to give place to the facts which belong to immortal 
man. — Science and Health, p. 472. 

. . Mortals have a very feeble and imperfect idea of 

the spiritual man and the infinite range of his thought. To 
him belongs eternal life. Never born and never dying, it is 
an impossibility for Being, under the government of eternal 
Science, to fall from its high estate. — Ibid., p. 154. 

And still more specifically: 

Man represents God; mankind represents the Adamic race, 
and is a human, not a Divine creation. . . . The senses 
repre-ent Man as having untimely birth, and his death as 
irresistible, as if he were a weed growing apace, or a flower 
withered by the sun, or nipped by untimely frosts. But this 
is true only of mortals, not man. The Truth of Being is 
perennial. — Ibid., pp. 518, 161. 

More pantheism. The Scriptures, which represent 
man as being horn and as destined to untimely death, 
etc., are wrong", because man is God! "The senses ,, 
give this testimony as to the race, but their testimony 
is false, because the Truth of Being, which is God, is 
perennial. 



( 'i i kim' i w Science. 227 

Man, then, we must understand, is not to be con- 
founded with the Adamic race. The former is spirit- 
ual and perfect; the latter is an embodied falsity, a 

mass of sin, sickness, and death. The former is never 
born and never dies, being co-existent and co-eternal 
with God; the latter are brought forth in sin, and 
destined every one to pass through the "belief of 

death," to "disappear/' and so "give place to the eter- 
nal verities which belong to immortal man." And yet 
in all Mrs. Eddy has to say about the creation and 
the fall, she has not one plain word in regard to the 
origin of "mortal sense/' with all its train of w r oe. 
The fall she represents as a myth, and "mortal sense" 
is smuggled into her scheme, so far as I can find, with- 
out so much as a word of introduction. 

There are profound mysteries in this "Divine 
Science." It is, however, a significant fact that in six 
of the points named in her definitions of Adam and 
mortal sense, she states the same things of both. 
Hence we may conclude, in view of her denial of the 
identity of the Adamic race with man, that she con- 
siders "Adam" and "mortal sense" identical. She 
cannot be accused of running "mortal sense" into the 
ground. She simply gets it out of the ground when 
she gets Adam out, without pretending to show how 
it, any more than Adam, got there ! 

The distinction between Man and mankind which 
Mrs. Eddy has revealed, involves necessarily the de- 
nial of the doctrine of human personality. Man she 
has defined as the infinite idea of the infinite God. 
Being only an idea, he can hardly be spoken of as a 
person. Further, if man is an infinite idea, as she con- 
tends, it follows that if he is a person, he must be an 
infinite person ; and God being infinite, we would then 



228 Christian Science. 

have two infinite persons, which cannot be. Mrs. 
Eddy holds to "a sweet and sacred sense of Man's 
unity with his Maker/' and she cannot admit any 
view of human personality that would contradict what 
she has already said of the divine personality, of 
which, it will be remembered, she is so doubtful. In 
all her scattered remarks upon this question, her 
thought is muddy as the Tiber. She never anywhere 
gets away from the notion that personality, as com- 
monly understood, means a personality that is con- 
fined within the body. Hence she rejects the idea of 
personality as applied to God, as anthropomorphism, 
or "a humanization of deity." And since the race, as a 
whole, cannot be confined within the limits of any par- 
ticular body, she denies personality to the race. 

But in this denial, she fails, as we have shown, to 
get hold of the true meaning of personality. This 
attribute of man, which is predicable of every indi- 
vidual of the race, implies individual existence, self- 
consciousness, reason, and moral agency, or freedom 
of will. It is a spiritual, and not a physical attribute. 
Death cannot destroy it. The body changes in all its 
constituent atoms every few years, and at death re- 
turns to its mother earth. But the spirit, which is the 
personal man, lives on. This doctrine Mrs. Eddy re- 
pudiates expressly by denying that human beings have 
individual souls. In answering the question, What 
are body and soul ? she informs us oracularly that 
"identity is the reflection of Spirit in multifarious 
forms of this living Principle;" and that "Soul," 
which in her terminology is but another name for the 
divine Being, "is the Substance, Life, and Intelligence 
of Man." 1 She has defined Man as that which has 

1 Science and Health, p. 473. 



Christian Science. 229 

no separate Mind from God. To admit his real per- 
sonality, as one "revolving in an orbit of his own," 
would be to admit that he is somehow so independent 
of his Maker as to have no relations with him what- 
ever. More than one mind would mean, to her, more 
than one God, since she defines God as Mind. Hence 
she solemnly waives aside the notion with oracular 
and sententious brevity : "Verily, I say unto you, God 
is All-in- All, and you can never be outside of his one- 
ness. " 

Elsewhere she seems to admit that human per- 
sonality is a real fact to be reckoned with in our 
mortal career. On page 8 of Rudiments and Rules, 
we read: 

The human person is finite, and, therefore, I prefer to re- 
tain a proper sense of deity by using the phrase an individual 
God, rather than a personal God ; for there can be but one 
infinite individual Being, whom mortals have named God. 

But in Science and Health she says we "run into 
error when we divide Soul into souls, and multiply 
Mind into minds." So there is, after all, no such thing 
as a human personality. "Upon this stage of exist- 
ence goes on the dance of mortal mind," in which 
"mortal thoughts chase each other like snowflakes" 
(p. 146) ; but the "mortal thought of personality" 
is at variance with the only true and "scientific state- 
ment" of the fact. Still again, she tells us that "per- 
sonality includes more than is implied by the term 
person as commonly used." What then? Without 
giving any very definite reply to this question, she 
informs us that Christ was crucified because his ene- 
mies w r ere incensed by his "truly Christian and scien- 

1 Science and Health, p. 255. 



230 Christian Science. 

tific statement of personality and the relation of Man 
to God." 1 From this we can only infer that the 
statement in question was our Lord's answer to the 
high priest's inquiry, "Art thou the Christ, the Son 
of the Blessed?" Man's only true personality con- 
sists, then, in being, or in becoming, in precisely the 
same sense that Christ is, the Son of God. If "the 
word Christ is not properly a synonym for Jesus," and 
if Christ "expresses God's spiritual and eternal idea," 2 
which idea, as we have seen, is Man, does not this 
mean that man's destiny — the destiny, that is, of the 
whole race — is to become all that Christ now is? 
"When his personality disappears, man is immortal. 
Who can say what his personality becomes as the 
image and likeness of his Maker?" And if we are in 
doubt as to the answer she would give to the question, 
we may permit her spokesman, Mr. Bailey, to answer 
for us : 

The New Testament declares, and Science and Health 
demonstrates, that the Principle of Jesus — in other words, 
the Christ — is the name for that state of consciousness which 
is the goal, the inevitable, ultimate state of every soul. 

This is her universalism. All arc saved by being 
at last absorbed into the "Christ-Principle." But we 
are still in the dark. What docs Mrs. Eddy mean by 
human personality in this life? In the absence of any 
clear definition by herself, perhaps the following" from 
her pupil, Mr. Mason, may be accepted as a definition 
of human personality, according- to Mrs. Eddy: "The 
so-called material man is an incorporate belief of 
carnality, and the dissolution of the component parts 

1 Science and Health, p. 259. % Ibid., p. 228. 



Christian Science. 231 

or beliefs which constitute him we term death/' — 
Seed, April r, 1890. 

Man, if we are able to comprehend this mysterious 
doctrine, is an infinite creature, composed of a divine 
idea or consciousness, which is common to all the in- 
dividuals of the race, united to an indefinite number 
of "incorporate beliefs of carnality. " At death or 
subsequently these incorporate beliefs, or personal- 
ities, will all disappear, and nothing else will be left 
but the impersonal, eternal idea which has existed 
from the beginning. Human personality, then, like 
all other facts of consciousness, as viewed in this pe- 
culiar system, is illusory and transient. Man is, in 
the distant future, to become identified with the 
Christ-Principle, and all the individuals of whom the 
race was composed will have "disappeared" when the 
"man of God's creating" shall have been revealed. 
Thus do we find the doctrines of human individuality 
and of personal immortality both distinctly denied. 

Having denied the fall, repudiated the doctrine of 
human personality, and declared that man's mind is 
one with the divine intelligence, Mrs. Eddy is also 
compelled to deny that human beings are accountable 
to God. Mankind, indeed, is sinful, as she seems to 
admit ; but Man, she insists, is not to be confounded 
with the Adamic race. Besides, sin itself is not a fact 
in the universe, but an illusion, or false sense, which 
is destined to be lost or to disappear. This disap- 
pearance, or destruction of sin, is at once hell and 
heaven ; since the destruction of sin is God's only 
method of either pardon or punishment, and the loss 
of the sense of sin restores the sinner to "harmony," 
which is heaven. Now, it is evident that no amount 
of argument, and no repetitions, how r ever multitu- 



1 



232 Christian Science. 

dinous, of the text, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap," can prevent such doctrines from 
effecting in those who accept them a complete deliv- 
erance from all the wholesome fears wrought by the 
old doctrine of human accountability, with its corol- 
laries of future reward and retribution. 

But, lest her disciples should fail to follow her doc- 
trines into their logical consequences, she enters 
against the doctrine of human accountability a most 
positive denial. She is even driven to adopt the 
threadbare arguments of infidelity, in order to give 
to the shadowy fancies of her crazy creed some sem- 
blance of reasonableness. Infidels have argued that 
God would not and could not make man capable of 
sin, and then damn him for sinning. She, in like 
manner, argues that this would be to perpetuate a 
4k fraud on humanity." "In common justice," she 
cries, "we must admit that God will not punish man 
for doing what he created him capable of doing, and 
knew from the outset that he would do." (Science and 
Health, p. 302.) Just why she should go to the 
trouble of denying human accountability in such ex- 
plicit terms, when she has already denied the reality of 
sin, we cannot imagine. 

But it may be asked. How does Mrs. Eddy recon- 
cile her denial of personal immortality, etc., with the 
plain teachings of our Lord? He said, "Fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." 
Her interpretation of this passage, which was un- 
deniably the product of her most careful study, is a 
striking instance of her facility in cutting Gordian 
knots of difficulty when they stand in the way of her 
theories. This is her explanation of our Lord's 
meaning : 



Christian Science. 233 

A careful study of the text shows that the word soul meant 
sense or corporeal consciousness. The command was a 
warning to beware, not of Rome, Satan, or God, but of sin. 
—Science and Health, p. 92. 

From this brilliant example it is evident that Mrs. 
Eddy's powers of discernment are equal to any emer- 
gency. 

But, after all, this warning was not sufficiently ter- 
rible to justify a sinner in trembling as he reads it. 
This we may see from the following : 

In Science we learn that it is material sense, not Soul, 
which sins ; and it will be found that it is the sense of sin 
which is lost, and not man's sinful soul. When reading the 
Scriptures, the substitution of the word sense for soul gives 
the exact meaning in a majority of cases. — Ibid., p. 477. 

"All sin is of the flesh/' she has told us elsewhere ; 
"it cannot be spiritual/' Flesh, being matter, is an 
unreality, and sin, being of the flesh, is an unreality ; 
and hence the salvation promised in Holy Writ, and 
for which Jesus seemed to die that it might be ours, is 
nothing but salvation from unrealities. "The real 
Man cannot depart from holiness," nor can God, "by 
whom Man was evolved, engender the capacity or 
freedom to sin." True, there are sinners, but these 
are not, properly speaking, men. "Mortals are man's 
counterfeits . . . the children of the Wicked One, 
or one evil, which declares that man begins as a ma- 
terial embryo." (Ibid., pp. 207, 471.) Moreover, all 
men, though now classed as mortals, if not sufficiently 
enlightened to accept Mrs. Eddy's guidance, are not- 
withstanding destined to pass through the "gateway 
of Science" into the royal estate of manhood, which is 
Christhood. 



234 Christian Science. 

We would, however, do Mrs. Eddy the justice to 
say that in her treatment of sin, her practice ignores 
her logic quite as much as it does in the matter of eat- 
ing. She counts sin an "awful unreality." But if it 
be an unreality, why not treat it as all other beliefs of 
mortal mind are treated in the Christian Science 
medical practice — that is, as a mere illusion, which is 
to be destroyed simply by refusing to admit its re- 
ality? "Healing the sick and reforming the sinner 
are one and the same thing in Christian Science," 
says this "Mental Messiah." {Science and Health, 
p. 403.) If, then, it be truly "scientific" to say to an 
invalid, Your sickness exists only in your belief ; cor- 
rect your thought by denying the evidence of your 
senses — why not say to the conscience-stricken suf- 
ferer from "chronic sin," Your sin is only a belief of 
mortal mind, a figment of your imagination ; you have 
done no wrong, and your regrets are needless? If 
we may deny the plain sense of Scripture and the 
testimony of our senses in the one case, why may we 
not deny, with equal propriety, the testimony of Scrip- 
ture and of our own consciences in the other? 

Much that Mrs. Eddy and her followers have writ- 
ten has seemed to imply that no sinner needs to pay 
any attention to his conscience, and that "Christian 
Science" repentance consists simply in blinding one's 
self to one's own sins. Thus the "Word of Science" 
declares that — 

These beliefs of sin, sickness and death are only beliefs; 
they are not realities of Being; God is Love, and he has not 
bound on you these burdens ; you are not the hateful beings 
you believe; you were made in, and you are, the image and 
likeness of God. — Christian Science Scries, No. 6, p. 4. 



Christian Science. 235 

Again, we are told repeatedly that Man is per- 
fect; that "Soul cannot sin," that "Man is incap- 
able of sin, sickness or death," and we might infer 
that all repentance is needless. (Science and Health, 
p. 464.) But for all that, Mrs. Eddy and her school 
will not use, in their treatment of sin, the method 
which they have so clearly indicated, and which they 
consistently apply in their treatment of disease. They 
dare not assure the sinner that his conscience is a 
lying witness, and that he must banish all thought 
and memory of his own guilt, and stoutly affirm, 
/ have not sinned! Two difficulties lie in the way 
of such a course, consistent as it must appear to all 
who believe her teachings. One is that both the 
general tenor and many particular passages of Scrip- 
ture plainly estop any such proceeding. Paul and 
John, not to mention other apostles, and even our 
Lord himself, have spoken so plainly that their testi- 
mony must be accepted, or else the whole Scripture 
must be thrown overboard. Paul (Romans iii. 23) 
declares that all men have sinned, and come short of 
the glory of God ; while John goes so far as to say, "If 
we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and 
the truth is not in us," and also, "If we say that we 
have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word 
is not in us." Such declarations from a book which 
"Science" requires us to accept as of equal authority 
even with Mrs. Eddy's "feeble revelation," cannot 
be waived aside. Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate, when 
she is discussing other points of doctrine, to misapply, 
explain away, or even deny, the authority of Scrip- 
ture ; but in this case the contradiction would be too 
bald, and the probable result a revolt in her camp. 
The other difficulty is, that in reforming sinners she 



236 Christian Science. 

can hardly expect to succeed by telling them no refor- 
mation is necessary. It is quite pleasing to her fancy 
to view Man — the vague, general, impersonal Man, 
conceived of as the abstract, Divine, Archetypal Idea 
— as perfect, sinless, and incapable of sin, but never- 
theless, as we have seen, she affirms that all mortals 
are sinners. She cannot be blind to the facts, and 
does not pretend to deny them. 

Accordingly, she advises quite a different method 
of dealing with sin. She would have her students 
never so much as audibly name diseases, lest the 
very naming of them should prove a creative power 
to produce such "erroneous beliefs ;" but "lust, hatred 
and dishonesty/' however unreal, are not to be con- 
sidered such unrealities that they may be dismissed 
by denial, like the "false claims" of headache. 
(Science and Health, p. 403.) She must, perforce, 
uphold the Bible, declaim against sin as an evil, 
and preach up the duty of holiness. Sins she counts 
errors, but she manifestly uses the word in this con- 
nection in a different sense from that in which she is 
wont to use it in discussing physical maladies. The 
latter she has defined as errors in the sense of being 
illusions, mere spectres conjured up by "mortal mind." 
Sinful passions and propensities she seems to con- 
sider errors in the sense of being mistakes of judg- 
ment, and as promising falsely — which is correct. 
Nobody denies that sin is a fearful mistake and a 
dreadful delusion. Hence, her treatment of sin is 
so far almost orthodox. Witness the following : 

The heat of hatred, inflaming brutal propensities, the in- 
dulgence of evil motives and aims, will make any man who 
is above the lowest type of manhood a hopeless sufferer. 

. . . Christian Science commands man to master these 



Christian Science. 237 

propensities — to hold hatred in abeyance with kindness, to 
conquer revenge with charity, and to overcome deceit with 
honesty. . . Choke these errors in their early stages, if 
yon wonld not cherish an army of conspirators against health, 
happiness and success. . . . "Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap." . . . Yon had better be exposed 
to every plague on earth than to endure the cumulative ef- 
fects of a guilty conscience. The abiding consciousness of 
wrong-doing tends to destroy the ability to do right. — Science 
and Heal tli, p. 403. 

Thus we see, that while denying the reality of sin 
in general, she is forced to admit the existence of 
sinful appetites, propensities and deeds in particular ; 
and that she would have these destroyed, not like dis- 
ease, by the mere mastery of "Mind" over mortal 
sense, but from first to last by being " regretted, " 
struggled against and conquered. 

But the trail of the serpent is in her doctrine of 
sin, and Mrs. Eddy does not succeed in neutralizing 
the poisonous slime by covering it with orthodox 
phrases. She holds that sin is an unreality, and her 
followers are compelled to regard it as a mere delu- 
sion. She maintains that God "is of purer eyes than 
to behold iniquity," and explains this to mean that 
God cannot be conscious of any evil in his universe. 
"Doth God know, and is there knowledge with the 
Most High?" is a question to which she returns, in 
all her discussion of sin, an emphatic negative. The 
God of the Bible, to whom she refers respectfully as 
"the Jewish tribal God, Jehovah," is a God who hates 
and abominates sin ; but Mrs. Eddy's God, abiding in 
a passionless calm, is unconscious of evil and of sin. 
He is incapable of displeasure, and his wrath, Paul 
to the contrary, is never visited upon the children of 



238 Christian Science. 

disobedience. He has not appointed any day in which 
he will judge the world by that man whom he hath or- 
dained. No ; Paul was mistaken. Thus sounds the 
"trumpet voice of Truth": "No final judgment 
awaits mortals; for the judgment day of Wisdom 
comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by 
which mortal man is divested of all material error. 
As for spiritual error, there is none." — Science and 
Health, p. 187. 

Sin is "a material error," of which mortals are be- 
ing surely and inevitably divested. It does not touch 
the Soul, and is left behind in the march of Mind, with 
all other mundane illusions ! 

We have observed, also, that she scouts the doc- 
trine of original sin, and makes it synonymous with 
"Adam, falsity, error," etc. ; and then, admitting it 
through constraint, counts it the fictitious attribute of 
an imaginary "Adamic race." The key-note of her 
anthropology is that Man is "perfect and sinless as 
the Mind which created him." Xo amount of ortho- 
dox exhortation, no grudging and ambiguous admis- 
sion of sin as an evil actually affecting the lives of 
men, can prevent such doctrine from being turned, 
by those who accept it, into practical antinomianism. 
Let any man consider that his thoughts are divine, 
and his real self sinless and incapable of sin, and it 
it but a step to the opinion that do what he may, he is 
doing right. The following is Mrs. Woodbury's tes- 
timony, as to her own experience in Christian Science 
teaching and healing: 

Certain manifestations were unaccountable on any ra- 
tional theory. Persons whom I persuaded to try this cura- 
tive system drifted into abnormal actions. Their statements, 
sometimes written as well as spoken, w r ere startlingly con- 



Christian Science. 239 

tradictory. ... In my own "chambers of imagery" also 
was mental bewilderment. At one moment all seemed 
surely good, yet the next hour the feeling supervened that 
wrong was the great ruler, and that mankind might exclaim 
with ^Milton's Satan, "Evil, be thou my Good." . . . 

A bulwark was needed to stem the erotic tide, favored in 
some quarters ; and moral stamina was the more essential, 
because the odium of increasing divorce and domestic aliena- 
tion, the land over, was often attributed to Christian Science. 
Certain patent domestic misfortunes among mental workers 
naturally brought discredit upon Christian Science and in- 
creased my strenuous advocacy of the imperative necessity 
of the home. . . Some essays of mine on this very sub- 
ject were later rejected by the Christian Science Journal as 
not coming within its scope, etc. — War in Heaven. 

All this is readily accounted for. Bewilderment, 
immorality, insanity, domestic alienation and divorce, 
all conspiring to "bring discredit upon Christian 
Science/' are sufficient to indicate a state of things 
that would make the management of a "Scientific" 
periodical chary about admitting into its pages essays 
that would, even in sounding the alarm, publish the 
shame of the new "Church of Christ!" Christian 
Science doctrine is moral poison. The fact stated by 
Mrs. Woodbury in the Arena, May, 1899, that "Chris- 
tian Science families are notably childless," is just 
what we would expect. 

Mrs. Eddy and her followers may insist as much 
as they please that sin must inevitably produce suf- 
fering; but she has blunted the force of all such or- 
thodox warnings by her own invariable proviso that 
sin and suffering are both unrealities. Her doctrine 
delivers its adherents from all sense of accountability, 
and breeds an egoistic perfectionism that is close akin 
to madness. 



240 Christian Science. 

But she and her school, being sure that her inter- 
pretations of Scripture are the only ones which give 
the "spiritual sense/' are unable to see the reason of 
their own spiritual impotence. Her own w r ords sound 
like an unconscious prophecy of her disastrous failure 
to reform the world : "Take away the spiritual sig- 
nification of Scripture, and that compilation can do 
no more for mortals than moonbeams to melt a river 
of ice." — Science and Health, p. 137. 

We need not pause to inquire particularly what 
our oracle teaches as to the new birth. She has made 
it plain that Man does not need it, and that "mortals" 
attain it only at their last death. Then, and not till 
then, do they forever "put off false individuality," by 
ceasing to exist as personal beings. 

Little need has Christian Science of atonement. 
Man is no sinner, and there is no pardon for the 
transgressions of mortals. "In trying to undo the 
errors of sense one must pay, here or hereafter, the 
utmost farthing, until the body is fully brought into 
subjection to the Spirit." The divine method of 
paying sin's wages differs, in "Science," from the 
method indicated by Paul. It is not death that the 
sinner inherits; but the reward of sin simply "in- 
volves unwinding one's snarls, and learning from ex- 
perience, through pangs unspeakable, how to divide 
between error and Truth." But inasmuch as one who 
professes to believe the Bible must believe in an atone- 
ment of some sort, she makes the sinner's "at-one- 
ment" consist in a "true sense of Love," or "unity 
with God," i. e. 3 deification. — Ibid., pp. 136, 137, 324. 

In leaving this part of our subject, we may glance 
at the Christian Science doctrine as to unembodied 
spirits. The existence of personal angels and devils 



Christian Science. 241 

Mrs. Eddy dismisses unceremoniously. Having - re- 
fused to allow us to think of men as persons, she can- 
not, of course, admit the existence of any hierarchy of 
spirits, either in heaven or hell. Accordingly she 
gives this impressive and beautiful account of angels : 

Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving ani- 
mal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial visitants, 
flying on spiritual, not material pinions. They are pure 
thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no mat- 
ter what their individualism may be. Human conjecture 
confers upon them its own forms of thought, making them 
human creatures with suggestive pinions; but this is only 
fancy. . . . 

My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of 
some sepulchre, where human belief has buried its fondest 
earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a 
new and glorified trust, a higher ideal of Life and its joys. 
Angels are God's impartations to man — not messengers, or 
persons, but messages of the true idea of divinity flowing 
into humanity. These upward-soaring thoughts never lead 
mortals toward self or sin, but guide them to the Principle 
of all Good, whither every pure and uplifting aspiration 
tends. — Science and Health, pp. 194-5. 

Applying, for the purpose of eliciting its inmost 
meaning, one of Mrs. Eddy's own principles of in- 
terpretation to this passage, let us reverse one of its 
propositions, and the meaning leaps out luminously. 
Her thoughts are the "upward-soaring" angels, mes- 
sages of the true idea of divinity, leading us to the 
Principle of Good, etc. And all other thoughts, of 
course, are angelic in proportion as they harmonize 
with hers ! When the Scripture writers spoke of an- 
gels as persons and messengers, they were only in- 
spired by human fancy — nothing more ! David was 
in a fine frenzy of mere poetic fervor, and did not ex- 



242 Christian Science. 

pect to be understood literally, when he wrote, "Bless 
the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that 
do his commandments, hearkening unto the. voice of 
his word !" And much Scripture must be cut out of 
our Bibles, if we entertain Mrs. Eddy's beautiful, 
white-fingered, wingless angels, that would lead us 
to a "new and glorified" trust in her book as Im- 
manuel ! 

Her treatment of devils is even more summary. 
She simply decapitates the principal w r ord which 
stands for an evil spirit, and the father of liars be- 
comes merely abstract Evil, while lesser demons be- 
come evils. Thus does this higher and more practical 
Christianity deliver its adherents from all necessity of 
taking precautions against Satan's devices, not only 
denying to him and his hosts a "local habitation and a 
name," but annihilating the wretched hierarchy of 
hell. Nevertheless, Mrs. Eddy finds a devil somehow 
necessary in her system, and she makes use of the 
idea by distributing evil through the ages, and iden- 
tifying it particularly with all opinions that militate 
against her revelation. Thus she identifies the devil 
in her definition of him with Adam, Eve, Canaan, 
Ham, Issachar, with matter and mortal mind, and 
more than all, with animal magnetism. As the adver- 
sary, he is all that opposes, denies and disputes reality 
and Truth, which is to say, Christian Science. Our 
Lord said, "Why do ye not understand my speech? 
Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of 
your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye 
will do." But in this he was explaining "the origin of 
material man and of mortal mind !" We do not know 
which to admire most in this luminous exposition — 
the ingenuity with which she gets rid of the devil, or 



Christian Science. 243 

the refined wit which prompts her to retain his name 
as a convenient term by which to designate the pa- 
ternity of all unbelievers in her "sacred discovery.'' 
And, since she has defined "evil spirits" as false be- 
liefs, and said that these were the devils that Jesus cast 
out during his earthly ministry, we who refuse to 
acknowledge her as the Messiah for this age must 
be content to let ourselves be thought of by pious 
Scientists as devils possessed of devils ! 

But, notwithstanding her annihilation of the devil 
and all his host, Mrs. Eddy has not succeeded in de- 
livering her followers from fear of evil. Says Mrs. 
Woodbury (Arena, May, 1899) : 

Demonophobia, the fear of demons, the fear of witch- 
craft, is the better name for the Christian Science disease. 
Its advocates are crazy with the fear of a Satan of their 
own making, and this fear is stimulated by Mrs. Eddy's 
constant allusions to the subject. "If you cannot take up 
malicious animal magnetism," she said to one of her editors, 
kk you can't handle my magazine." Nowhere does demono- 
phobia thrive with such virulence as in this sect of people, 
who cross themselves in the name of Mary Eddy. 

The stark superstition and insane fear taught and 
exemplified by Mrs. Eddy are almost incredible. 
When Mrs. Eddy's fourth husband died, the autopsy, 
according to the writer just quoted, showed that 
"death' was the result of distinctly developed heart- 
disease ; but Mrs. Eddy declared that it was the effect 
of arsenical poison, mentally administered" by some 
of her former students who had now become rivals ! 
She claimed, it is said, that she could have healed the 
assassinated Garfield but for the "malicious interfer- 
ence" of Messrs. Kennedy and Arens, both of whom 
had been her pupils. But perhaps the greatest mar- 



244 Christian Science. 

vel in the superstitions which she has taught is the 
doctrine she has communicated privately to her pu- 
pils, to the effect that women may not only "become 
mothers through a supreme effort of their own 
minds," but also by the influence over them of some 
"unholy ghost," or malign spirit; albeit, she assured 
them she could "dissolve such motherhood by a wave 
of her celestial rod." "Women of unquestionable in- 
tegrity, who have been Mrs. Eddy's students, testify 
that she has so taught, and that by this teaching fam- 
ilies have been broken up ; that thus maidens have 
been terrified out of their wits, and stimulated into a 
frenzy resembling that of deluded French nuns, who 
believed themselves brought into marital relations 
with the glorified Jesus, as veritably the bridegroom 
of the church." 1 Comment is unnecessary. 

1 Mrs. Woodbury. 



XVI. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, THEOSOPHY AND 
GNOSTICISM. 

The denial of all commonly accepted doctrines as 
to the future life follows necessarily upon Mrs. Eddy's 
denial of human personality, and her views of the final 
destiny of the race. Already we have scented, in her 
teaching as to the pre-incarnation of Jesus in the 
first man, the unmistakable odor of Theosophy. We 
have observed that she teaches Pantheism, though 
she stoutly denies that she is a Pantheist; and that, 
while she denounces hypnotism in the strongest 
terms as "mental mal-practice," criminal, etc., she 
adopts its basic principle of "suggestion 1 ' as the 
ground-work of her system of mental healing. When, 
therefore, we find her declaring that Theosophy is 
opposed to Christian Science, it need not surprise us 
to learn that a large part of her system is a plagiarism 
from theosophical sources, and little more to be 
heeded than her refusal to acknowledge her debt to 
Dr. Quimby. Her defense against this charge could 
hardly be more decisive than her defense in the mat- 
ter of her mental healing theory. She did not re- 
ceive her revelation until after Dr. Quimby was dead, 
and neither did she receive it all until after Theosophy 
had been brought to the attention of New Yorkers 
and presumably of Bostonians. The first edition of 
Science and Health was not published until 1875. 



246 Christian Science. 

Some time before that Madame Blavatsky, the oracle 
of modern Theosophy, came to New York, and her 
society was organized in that city in 1875. Here, 
then, is another coincidence. 

Theosophy, or the "Wisdom Religion," is the term 
chosen to represent their creed by certain people who 
have within the past thirty years undertaken to bring 
an emended, enlarged Buddhism to the front, and 
substitute it for Christianity. They have adopted 
the philosophy which flourished in the first ages of 
the Christian era among certain heathen sects in 
India, and, to a considerable extent, among early 
Christian heretics. To this they have added some 
gleanings from Spiritualism, and from various other 
religions and philosophies, with some small flavor of 
Christian ethics and philanthropy. 

The resemblance between "Christian Science" and 
Theosophy is noticeable, first, in their nomenclature. 
It can hardly be considered a matter of accidental 
coincidence that so many of the terms chosen by Mrs. 
Eddy and her followers as the symbols of their "ex- 
alted thoughts" are identical with those adopted by 
Madame Blavatsky and her school. "Divine Science" 
is a term which the former use as synonymous with 
"Christian Science," while the word "Science" they 
use interchangeably with Wisdom. Divine Science 
means, therefore, Divine Wisdom, and this is simply 
a translation of the word Theosophy. "Embracing 
both the scientific and religious/*' says William Q. 
Judge, "Theosophy is a scientific religion and a re- 
ligious science." In the Christ-Principle of Mrs. Eddy 
we recognize the "Christos Principle" of which Mad- 
ame Blavatsky has somewhat to say ; and both are 
agreed that this Christ-Principle incarnated itself in 



Christian Science. 247 

others before it was manifested in Jesus of Nazareth. 
In defining God as Being, Substance, Principle, Life, 
Good, the Infinite, etc., Mrs. Eddy but follows in the 
wake of those who profess their belief in a "Universal 
Divine Principle. " So also in Mrs. Eddy's division of 
Man into "mortal sense/' the Christ-Principle, and 
the Divine Mind or Ego, all of which she considers 
as possessed by each of us, we recognize a crude and 
bungling effort to appropriate the main ideas of the 
"higher trinity" of Theosophy — Manas, the Thinker, 
Buddhi, or the Christos Principle, and Atman, the 
Supreme Ego. To this last Madame Blavatsky gives 
the further names of the "Universal Life," the "One 
Self," and the "Higher Self;" and Mrs. Eddy, after 
defining "I, or Ego," as "Principle, Spirit, Soul, in- 
corporeal, unerring, immortal, and eternal Mind," 
goes on to say, "There is but one I, or Us, but one 
Principle, or Mind, governing all existence," etc. 

Mrs. Eddy, having thus adopted a number of the 
terms in which this Oriental philosophy is paraded, 
has been followed by other teachers of Mental Science 
healing in the use of such terms as the following, all 
of which are borrowed from the same source : 

Gnosis is the spiritual understanding, which is de- 
fined by Madame Blavatsky as knowledge, and as 
applying to "the spiritual and sacred knowledge, the 
gupta-vidya of the Hindus." Yoga is simply concen- 
tration of thought, in Mental Science teaching, while 
Madame Blavatsky applies it to the philosophy of 
"Yajnavalyah, a famous and very ancient sage." 
Karma is the law of cause and effect in Mental 
Science literature, and has the same meaning in 
Madame Blavatsky's works. Maya is used by Mental 
Scientists as meaning illusion, "mortal mind," and 



248 Christian Science. 

false beliefs, while its first meaning in Theosophy is 
illusion. 

"These terms/" observes Dr. Buckley, "are as val- 
uable in affecting the ordinary mind as chloride of 
sodium for salt, capsicum for pepper, and H 2 for 
water. They serve also to make it appear that the 
Science is difficult, and that large fees for instruction 
are reasonable." 

But when we turn from the symbolism of the new 
Christianity to its doctrines, and compare these with 
the teachings of Madame Blavatsky and her followers, 
the resemblances are so many and so minute that we 
are compelled to ascribe both to a common origin. 
The evidence is overwhelming that if Mrs. Eddy did 
not seize upon Madame Blavatsky's religious ideas 
when they first appeared, she has at any rate learned 
something of the Oriental philosophy from which the 
Madame professed to have derived her "Wisdom Re- 
ligion." 

Beginning with her definition of God, as we have 
already seen, Mrs. Eddy, in every important partic- 
ular, teaches precisely what has been taught for ages 
by the Hindu philosophy. That system is pantheistic. 
Denying Pantheism, Mrs. Eddy holds steadfastly to 
its fundamental postulate, which is, God is all. Com- 
pare the following passages, in which the italicized 
words and phrases are the same in both authors : 

From Mrs. Eddy — 

God is identical with nature. — Science and Health, p. 13. 

Christian Science strongly designates the thought that 
God is not corporeal (p. 10). Human conceptions would 
. . . say that an anthropomorphic god instead of infinite 
Principle is the Father, etc. — p. 153. 

God is individual, incorporeal, the Universal Cause, . . . 



Christian Science. 249 

. . . all-inclusive. (Pp. 226-' 7.) Divine Principle, Reality, 
and can produce nothing unlike himself . . the eternal. — 
p. 231. 

From Madame Blavatsky — 

We reject the idea of a personal or an extracosmic and 
anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of 
man. etc. — Key to Theosophy, p. 55. 1 

We believe in a universal Divine Principle, the root of all, 
from which all proceeds, etc. — Ibid., p. 56. 

When we speak of the Deity, and make it identical with 
Nature, the eternal Nature is meant, and not your ag- 
gregate of flitting shadows and finite unrealities is meant. — 
p. 58. 

We occultists and Theosophists see in it the only universal 
and eternal Reality, casting a periodical reflection of Itself 
on the infinite spacial depths. — p. j6. 

This last statement of Madame Blavatsky is her 
account of creation. God simply reflects himself 
through space; and she has also told us that this 
Nature thus created is not that composed of "flitting 
shadows and finite unrealities." We have seen how 
Mrs. Eddy rejects the Mosaic account of creation. 
Here is her own : 

The creative Principle — Life, Truth and Love — is God. 
The universe reflects him. There is but one Creator and one 
creation. This creation consists in the unfolding of spiritual 
ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite 
Mind, and forever reflected. These ideas range from the 
infinitesimal to immensity, and the highest ideas are the sons 
and daughters of God. — Science and Health, p. 496. 

Here we have precisely the same thought as to the 

1 Quotations from Key to Theosophy are from second and 
revised American edition. 



250 Christian Science. 

character of creation. It is a reflection or unfolding 
of God. There appears to be a difference only as to 
the duration of the universe. Mrs. Eddy apparently 
holds that it is eternal, while Madame Blavatsky holds 
that it is periodically "reflected" and then absorbed 
back again into God. 

What do these two prophetesses have to say of 
Man? 

Mrs. Eddy's account has already been given, and 
is simply that Man is the infinite idea or reflection of 
God, reflecting God as the image in the mirror reflects 
the man looking at the mirror. Man had no begin- 
ning, being "co-existent and co-eternal with God," 
and can "never be outside of his one-ness." Madame 
Blavatsky also holds to the same theory of the "unity 
of All in All." We have quoted Christian Science 
doctrine as to the fact that Man's only Mind is God, 
who is "Substance, the invisible and indivisible" and 
that the "Principle" of Jesus is the "Father in secret" 
of whom he speaks, and is the "generic Mind of Man." 
Madame Blavatsky agrees with this precisely. "We 
say that the Spirit — the 'Father in secret' of Jesus — 
or Atman, is no individual property of any man, but 
the divine essence . . . invisible and indivisible" 1 
Here the agreement between these two antagonists is 
perfect. 

We saw in her doctrine as to the first man that Mrs. 
Eddy believed in the preexistence of men. Elsewhere 
she asserts this idea plainly, and argues to prove it 
true : 

If man did not exist before the material organization be- 
gan he could not exist after the body is disintegrated. If we 

1 Key to Theosophy, p. 90. 



Christian Science. 251 

live after death, and are immortal, we must have lived before 
birth; for if Life ever had any beginning it must have also 
an ending. — Science and Health, p. 427. 

This is good Buddhism, as witness the following 
from Madame Blavatsky : "Both the human spirit or 
the individuality, the reincarnating spiritual Ego, and 
Buddhi, the spiritual soul, are preexistent." — Key to 
Theosophy, p. 94. 

The only difference between the two inspired 
teachers seems to be that the American denies that 
there is any sense in which God is in Man ; but even 
in this the difference is but superficial. Says the 
Russian divinity, " . . . we believe with the Neo- 
platonists and the Eastern teachings that the spirit 
(Atma) never descends hypostatically into the living 
man, but only showers more or less its radiance on 
the inner man/' — Ibid., p. 91. 

So, after all, this is, "scientifically" speaking, 
heavenly, which is to say, "harmonious with Truth/' 
or otherwise with Mrs. Eddy's doctrine. 

Theosophy, like Christian Science, appeals to the 
Scriptures w T hen a text can be squeezed into service. 
And this teaching as to the preexistence of man is 
held to be sustained by the question addressed by the 
disciples to Jesus, touching the affliction of the man 
who had been born blind. "Master, who did sin, this 
man or his parents, that he was born blind?" We 
might grant that the question shows at least the ig- 
norance of the disciples ; but the Master's answer 
was certainly not an admission of the doctrine in 
question, "Neither . . . but that the works of God 
might be manifest in him." Inasmuch as the doctrine 
of reincarnation is based upon the idea that birth it- 
self is a misfortune, and in some sort a punishment 



252 Christian Science. 

for misdoing in a former life, and that every afflic- 
tion which we suffer here is to be accounted for by 
reference to Karma, or the law of cause and effect, 
otherwise retribution, which is held by both Buddhists 
and Christian Scientists, we cannot conceive how our 
Lord could have given a more emphatic denial to the 
doctrine. The disciples, tinctured possibly with the- 
osophic errors, assumed that the poor man's blindness 
was due to the sin either of himself or his parents, 
and the .Master corrected that assumption with an 
emphatic neither. 1 

1 There are some minds, imaginative and sentimental, to 
whom the thought of previous existence is exceedingly at- 
tractive. Wordsworth seems to have expressed his convic- 
tion of its truth in his well-known words — 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
The Soul that rises with us. our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And comcth from afar ; 

Not in entire forgetfulne--. 
Nor yet in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home. 

Even Tennyson, true as he was to most of the essentials 
of Christianity, might be accused of being somewhat tinc- 
tured with this old philosophy. Witness the following in his 
last poem, full as that is of genuine Christian hope: 

Twilight and evening star, 

And one clear call for me, 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 

When I put out to sea; 
But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound or foam. 
When that which drew from out the bo mull ess deep 

Turns toward home. 



Christian Science. 253 

Again, we observe an identity of doctrine in the 

two systems touching the doctrines of grace. We 
have seen how Mrs. Eddy sneers at "pinning one's 
faith to another's vicarious effort/' and we find 
Madame Blavatsky repudiating the atonement, which, 

But it is evident that he did not agree with Theosophists. 
In the last stanza of that swan song of his spirit we have the 
words — 

And though from out this bourne of time and space 

My soul may wander far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 

When I have crossed the bar. 

Here is a clear expression of hope in personal immortality, 
and of desire to see that "strong Son of God," of whom he 
had sung in strains so sweet in his immortal tribute to his 
dead friend. Nor can we forget his passionate protest in 
In Memoriam against the doctrine which is the logical cor- 
relative of the Pantheistic notion of man's preexistence — 
that of final reabsorption into the Soul of the Universe : 

That each who seemed a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self, at last should fall 

Remerging in the general Soul, 

Is faith as vague as all unsweet ; 

Eternal form shall still divide 

The Eternal Soul from all beside, 
And I shall know him when we meet. 

Tennyson was in full sympathy with much of the advanced 
thought which became current through the ministry of such 
men as Frederick W. Robertson and his own intimate friend, 
Maurice; but there is no evidence in all that he has written 
that he was at heart a Buddhist. Doubts he may have had, 
but, like his friend, he had learned how to slay those 
"spectres of the mind." 



254 Christian Science. 

whether the vicarious actor be "God or man, is most 
revolting" to her, and also "most degrading to human 
dignity." Again, she pronounces that a dangerous 
doctrine which teaches that "no matter how enormous 
our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we 
have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for 
the salvation of mankind, and his blood will wash 
out every stain." As to pardon, says Mrs. Eddy, 
"mercy cancels the debt only when justice approves;" 
and Madame Blavatsky remarks that one's innate 
sense of justice is perverted if taught that his sins 
will be forgiven because another man has been put 
to death for his sake. Mrs. Eddy goes out of her way 
to scout and repudiate "the old doctrine of foreordi- 
nation ;" Madame Blavatsky and her followers take 
pains to quote and condemn the Westminster Confes- 
sion of Faith, and the Madame herself roundly de- 
nounces election as a "cruel and idiotic doctrine which 
makes of God a senseless fiend." 

The affinity between Mrs. Eddy's system and mod- 
ern Theosophy appears still more plainly in her teach- 
ings as to the future life. It is a fundamental notion 
of this popular form of Buddhism that human beings 
are in a state of transition, and destined to be re-born 
again and again until at last absorbed into the divine 
essence. We have seen how Christian Scientism 
teaches that mortals are all destined to "disappear," 
and man to become at last identified with the Christ- 
Principle. We observe in all its literature a studious 
avoidance of anything that looks like the doctrine that 
human personality, as we are conscious of it here, is 
to survive and characterize the eternal state of man. 
Nor do we find anything definite in the system touch- 
ing heaven and hell, and the experiences of the soul 



Christian Science. 255 

in the future life. Heaven is harmony, and hell is 
discord, both here and hereafter — so much, and no 
more, are we told concerning our future life. The 
explanation of all this significant silence and nebulous 
dogma is that Mrs. Eddy believes in re-birth and in 
the transmigration of souls ! 

Those who reach this transition called death, without hav- 
ing rightly improved the lessons of this primary school of 
mortal existence, — and still believe in matter's reality, pleas- 
ure and pain, — are not ready to understand immortality. 
Hence they awaken only to another sphere of experience and 
must pass through another probationary state before it can 
be truly said of them, Blessed are the dead which die in the 
Lord* — Unity of Good, p. 3. 

Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity by 
passing through the belief called death. After this momen- 
tary belief passes, at the moment of death, from the erring 
mortal mind man finds himself still in a conscious state of 
existence, and that he has but passed through an extreme 
moment of mortal fear to awaken with thoughts and being 
as material as before. , . . Spiritualization of thought is 
not attained by the death of the body but by conscious union 
with God. When we are on the same plane of conscious ex- 
istence with those gone before, we shall be able to communi- 
cate with them and recognize them, and when we have done 
our work here well enough not to have to do it over again, 
that change increases all our joys and means of advance- 
ment. — Christian Science Series, No. 1, p. 9. 

The Buddhism of these extracts is plain. Theo- 
sophical writers have much to say about "planes of 
being" and "planes of consciousness," and it is a 
favorite doctrine of theirs that in the future life we 
will be able to recognize and hold intercourse with 
none but those who are on the same "astral plane" as 
we ourselves. In the extract just quoted we have ob- 



256 Christian Science. 

served the same doctrine. But some Buddhists be- 
lieve that men may be re-born as apes or peacocks. 
Mrs. Eddy seems to be in doubt upon this point. She 
only ventures to hint that unless we accept her gospel 
there is danger of our being doomed to a second ex- 
perience of material existence. And where, pray, 
shall we do our work, if doomed to do it over again, 
unless the effort be repeated in this world ? Has she 
not taught us by implication that Jesus failed as the 
first man, and so had to be re-incarnated? And, 
again, if we may be doomed to a second experience of 
mortal existence, why not, if unfaithful, to a third 
and a fourth? Why not, also, be in danger of sinking 
to the plane of bestial life? For these questions our 
oracle has no answers. Having taught the general 
principle, she leaves her pupils to work out such ap- 
plications as may be suggested by the hardihood of 
their faith. 

Mrs. Eddy is silent touching the rapture, the song, 
and the exalted praise and holy service of the heavenly 
state. Madame Blavatsky speaks out plainly, "What 
between truncated angels, brass trumpets, golden 
harps, and material hell fires, the Christian heaven 
seems like a fairy scene at a Christmas pantomime." 
(Key to Theosophy, p. 152.) Mrs. Eddy is less can- 
did and more politic. She does not denounce ortho- 
dox teaching and contradict the Scriptures on these 
points as she does on so many others, but she does not 
discuss particularly the question of the future life of 
the blessed. Why this silence touching the most pre- 
cious hopes which the gospel brings to our fallen 
race? Evidently because in her system immortality 
is the immortality of God himself, and nothing else. 
The hope of Christian Scientist!! is the hope of Bud- 



Christian Science. 257 

dhism, of Brahmanism, and of Pantheism. It is to be 
merged at last in the divine essence, and to have at 
last no being or consciousness distinct from God's. 

Such a hope seems to be flattering to our self- 
importance, until it is examined in the light of reason, 
and then it is seen to be not one whit better than blank 
Atheism. It is but another form of the doctrine that 
death is an eternal sleep, since this absorption into the 
Divine Principle is placed at the end of the round of 
births and deaths. The final death, or at all events the 
triumph achieved in the last stage of material exist- 
ence, ushers the spirit into "the consciousness of one- 
ness with Being," in which the sense of personality 
disappears. God himself, in any wise, knows us alto- 
gether, and divine memory, unless we conceive of God 
as himself unconscious and unthinking, will register 
our fleeting life. If, then, our human personality is 
destined to be merged into the impersonal divine es- 
sence, that "deification of mortals" is to our souls, 
with all their hopes and longings and thirstings for 
immortality, but a shining entrance into eternal ob- 
livion. The doctrine is a glittering mockery of hu- 
man hope and human affection. As one has well said, 
"Pantheism is Atheism." He who surrenders his 
faith in a personal God and in a personal immortality, 
may fancy himself emancipated from the thraldom of 
superstition, but he has in fact been robbed of the 
most joyous hopes that ever cheered our poor, frail 
humanity. He has become an Atheist indeed, "with- 
out God and without hope in the world." 

If we would know what effect upon human am- 
bition and character this faith exerts, we have but to 
look across the seas, and witness the despairing apathy 
which has settled down upon all the nations which 



258 Christian Science. 

have been subjugated by the religion of Buddha. 
Witness the stolid indifference of the Chinese, and the 
sad hopelessness of the Hindus, toward all that 
makes for progress and happiness. Woman is an out- 
cast from social life, and maternity is a crime, where- 
ever Buddha, the "Night of Asia," has shed abroad 
his blighting faith. Love for one's own mother is 
mixed with contempt for womankind wherever men 
have been taught that life is a punishment and a 
curse, and that salvation can only be attained by be- 
coming freed from the fetters of matter and the illu- 
sions of mortality. 

Theosophists, indeed, pretending, like Christian 
Scientists, to find in their doctrine of the oneness of 
the human soul, a basis for a true brotherhood of 
humanity, claim to exhibit great unselfishness, and 
vaunt their shadowy creed as the grandest inspiration 
of altruism and philanthropy. But a greater than 
Buddha has given an infallible mark by which a creed 
as well as a personal profession can be tested — "by 
their fruits shall ye know them." Tested by this crite- 
rion, Buddhism lias been tried through the ages, and 
lias been found wanting. Its votaries have been de- 
prived of all motive to unselfish living in that they 
have been taught that the attainment of personal sal- 
vation is the supreme end of human endeavor, and 
that this salvation is not righteousness, but the ex- 
tinction of all desire and sensibility. Mortification 
of the flesh, and not the service of humanity, is the end 
of the Buddhist discipline. 

But without delaying further on this point, we ob- 
serve, once more, that if Mrs. Eddy's inspiration is 
all original, it is a little singular that she and Madame 
Blavatsky both deduce their favorite doctrine of the 



Christian Science. 259 

brotherhood of Man from the same pantheistic prem- 
ise, and both enter the same claim for public recogni- 
tion on the ground of their doctrine. Thus Mrs. 
Eddy: "Having one God, one Mind, establishes the 
brotherhood of man. ... All have one Mind, one 
Soul." — Science and Health, p. 172. 

And so also speaks Madame Blavatsky : "The iden- 
tity of the soul and spirit of real, immortal man . . . 
would lead us far on the road of real charity and 
brotherly good-will." — Key to Theosophy, p. 40. 

Lastly, in this comparison, we note that Christian 
Scientism resembles Buddhism in that it discounts the 
evidence of the material senses, and makes it the chief 
effort of human life to escape from their imperious 
rule. Both agree that the misery of the world is due 
to discord between the soul and its fleshly environ- 
ment. Mrs. Eddy bids her followers discredit the 
testimony of the senses, and thus attain •the "con- 
sciousness of oneness with God." Buddhism teaches 
that through the destruction of the senses we may at- 
tain nirvana, or complete peace, which is entire and 
final unconsciousness, though it be also union with 
the Absolute. In the Hindu fakir, lying on his back 
in the scorching sunshine of a tropical summer, his 
face plastered with mud, in which he has sown seed 
which must germinate before his painful vigil ends, 
or standing on a post for days and years together in 
constant effort to silence the voice of his rebellious 
senses, we see a spiritual kinsman of Mrs. Eddy and 
her followers. The latter teach that the way to har- 
mony, which is their term for nirvana, is the destruc- 
tion of our senses by the denial of their testimony to 
the reality of the external world and the facts of our 
conscious experience. Both are aiming at the destruc- 



260 Christian Science. 

tion of sin and misery through the extinction of all 
passion and sensibility, and both look forward to a 
state in which all material "illusions" will have passed 
away forever. 

Compare the following passages. The first three 
are from Buddhistic authorities. One is quoted by 
Dr. DuBose, in his masterly work on the three re- 
ligions of China, and describes the famous meditation 
of Buddha under the Bodhi tree : 

He forced his mind as the night wore on to a strict se- 
quence of thought, and as morning dawned the light he so 
long sought broke upon him, and he reached the goal of abso- 
lute intelligence; freed from the bondage of sense, perception 
and self, he has broken with the material world, and lives in 
eternity. 

The second is from that favorite classic of Theoso- 
phists, the Bhagavad Glta, and describes the "inde- 
structible path" entered by those who are "free from 
attachments," and are "laboring for salvation" : 

I [e who closeth all the doors of his senses, imprisoneth his 
mind in his heart, fixeth his vital powers in his head, stand- 
ing firm in meditation, repeating the monosyllable OM, and 
thus continues when he is quitting the body, goeth to the 
supreme goal. — Bhagavad Gita, sixth American edition, 
p. 60. 

The third is also from the Bhagavad Gita, in 
which Krishna advises that for the soul's purification 
one should — 

Practice meditation with his mind fixed on one point, the 
modifications of the thinking principle controlled, and the 
action of the senses and organs restrained. Keeping his 
body, head and neck firm and erect, with mind determined, 
and gaze directed to the tip of his nose, without looking in 



Christian Science. 261 

any direction, with heart at peace and free from fear, the 
Yogee should remain, . . . his thoughts controlled, and 
heart fixed on me. The devotee of controlled mind, who 
thus always bringeth his heart to rest in the Supreme, reach- 
eth that tranquility, the supreme assimilation with me.— 
Ibid., p. 46. 

These three passages, observe, are from recognized 
heathen writers. The next passage I quote is from 
Mrs. Eddy : 

Detach sense from the body, or matter, which is only a 
form of human belief, and you may learn the meaning of 
God, or Good, and the nature of the immutable and immortal. 
Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, . . . 
fixing your gaze upon the realities supernal, you may rise 
to the spiritual consciousness of Being, even as the bird 
which has burst the egg, and preens its wings for a skyward 
flight. — Science and Health, p. 157. 

Here is striking resemblance, both of sentiment and 
expression. By the "spiritual consciousness of Be- 
ing/'' it is plain that Mrs. Eddy means just what the 
Buddhist oracle does by "absolute intelligence," 
"tranquility" and "assimilation" with Krishna, which 
latter is one of the names given to the Christos Prin- 
ciple of Theosophy. "Breaking away from the mu- 
tations of time and sense" is certainly equivalent to 
becoming "freed from the bondage of sense, percep- 
tion and self ;" and in order to achieve this freedom we 
must act upon the Buddhistic plan, close the door and 
silence the voice of the senses, and thus "break with 
the material world." 

Mrs. Eddy does not, indeed, give such minute direc- 
tions as to the modus operandi as the Buddhist oracle 
does, as to standing, fixing the mind on one point, gaz- 



262 Christian Science. 

ing upon the tip of the nose, pronouncing the mono- 
syllable OM when quitting the body, etc. Her direc- 
tions, however, though less definite, are practically the 
same as Krishna's. She would have her followers 
"detach sense from the body/' and in order to do this, 
she would have them "enter into their closets" by 
closing the doors of sense, and in silent meditation, 
like that of Buddha under the Bodhi tree, gaze upon 
the realities supernal, until they can at last "peck their 
shells open with Christian Science" and — surpassing 
all other fledgelings — immediately "preen their wings" 
for a skyward flight. (Science and Health, p. 554.) 
The main difference between the two oracles is, that 
Mrs. Eddy does not tell precisely how the gaze may 
be directed toward realities supernal, while the Bud- 
dhist is expected to see them at or beyond the tip of 
his nose ; but as the word supernal implies elevation, 
it is obvious that if his nose is properly elevated the 
Buddhist, even according to Mrs. Eddy, may be look- 
ing in the right direction. And as to the sacred 
monosyllable OM, who could object to that? It is 
assuredly as good as any other ejaculation for a dying 
Buddhist, Christian Scientist, Theosophist, or any 
other person who rejects the Bible, does not believe 
in audible prayer, and reckons himself his own sav- 
iour, a part of God, and the only divinity with whom 
he has to do. 

Xo ingenuity of forced exposition, and no argu- 
ment, however plausible, can convince any rational 
soul that all this heathenism is in accord with the 
teachings of Christ. The labored efforts made by 
Mrs. Eddy and her tribe to reconcile their borrowed 
philosophy with the plain and unequivocal statements 
of Holy Writ — which reconciliation need not trouble 



Christian Science. 263 

them at all, since, as we have seen, they do not regard 

the Scriptures as "in any special sense inspired" — are 
only useful in blunting the sense of shock which the 
neophyte must inevitably experience in becoming ac- 
quainted with the high doctrines of the new revela- 
tion. Christian Scientists claim to be Christian, and 
profess reverence for that revelation without which 
there would be no Christianity in the world ; but after 
the first few lessons are learned, and the beginner is 
able to subscribe the doctrine that God is all, and that 
matter and sin are unrealities, the road to "harmony'' 
is plain, and all pretense of loyalty to Christ may be 
dropped. 

In leaving this part of our subject, it may be proper 
to observe that neither Mrs. Eddy nor Madame Bla- 
vatsky can claim any originality for their system. 
An examination of their peculiar teachings, point by 
point, will convince any student of church history 
that these modern oracles have simply revived the 
teachings of the ancient Gnostics in every important 
particular. Glimpses of the Gnostic heresy appear 
in the New Testament. In the book of the Acts one 
sect of these ancient schismatics appears in the person 
of their founder, Simon Magus, to whom Irenseus 
gave the title of Master and Progenitor of all heretics 
in general, and of Gnostics in particular. Another 
appears in the second chapter of the Apocalypse, 
verses six and fifteen, from which it appears that the 
Nicolaitanes were distinguished by false doctrine and 
by scandalous lives. Paul warns us against "opposi- 
tions of science, falsely so-called/' and marks "end- 
less genealogies," or, as Alford happily translates it, 
"doctrines of emanations/' as dangers threatening the 
purity of Christian doctrine. His word for science is 



264 Christian Science. 

gnosis, and as all Gnostics believed in a god of some 
sort, and many called themselves Christians, they were 
the Theosophists or Christian Scientists of their time. 
Like the modern Theosophists, they claimed that theirs 
was the "wisdom religion" underlying all the relig- 
ions and philosophies of the world. Like the Chris- 
tian Scientists, they claimed that their doctrines and 
methods were peculiarly ''scientific." Like both, they 
wrested the Scriptures to their own destruction, and 
looked down with contempt and pity on all who pre- 
sumed to disagree with them. There were plain peo- 
ple, deeply versed in the wisdom which the Holy 
Ghost teacheth, even in that long-past day, who felt 
some degree of resentment that these heathenizing 
teachers pretended to have the only wisdom or science 
worth naming. 

Gnosticism was Pantheistic, teaching that the real 
creation consisted of a series of emanations, or seons 
proceeding from God. It held to a sort of dualism, 
counting matter unreal and evil, and opposed to the 
real universe of spirit. Its doctrine of sin was that 
sin was of the flesh, attaching only to the perishing 
body, and this doctrine led some to practice mortifica- 
tion of the flesh as a means to holiness, as the Mar- 
cionites, while others, as the Xicolaitanes, threw 
themselves into the mire of licentiousness. Gnosti- 
cism held that, as God was not the author of evil, he 
could not be the creator of the visible, material world. 
Hence the invention of the demiurgic scheme of crea- 
tion, in which one of the aeons, or world-spirits, is rep- 
resented as becoming possessed of a sinful passion for 
the embrace of the abyss, and thus falling into matter, 
and through this fall becomes the father of the demi- 
urge, who proceeds to create the world. The Gnostic 



Christian Science. 265 

doctrine of salvation was the final emancipation of 
the soul from the fetters of matter, and its saviour was 
a being whose humanity was only a phantom, and 
whose life was but a series of deceptive appearances. 
Gnosticism taught that the destiny of the race was to 
be at last elevated into union with the Christos in the 
pleroma, or "light which is unapproachable and full 
of glory." 

The reader will see, if he will turn back to the teach- 
ings of our two oracles, that in all these particulars 
they have adopted the doctrinal system of the ancient 
Gnostics. Mrs. Eddy teaches them, if anything, more 
definitely than does Madame Blavatsky ; but the lat- 
ter does not hesitate to claim kinship with Gnostics 
in general and with Simon Magus in particular, iden- 
tifying her system with theirs. Both hold to a doc- 
trine of the Allness of God, and declare in the same 
words that God is "identical with nature.'' Both teach 
that the real creation w r as a reflection or emanation 
from God. Both hold to the reality and perfection 
of the spiritual universe, and to the unreality and sin- 
fulness of the material world. Both agree that all 
sin is of the flesh ; and we have seen how Mrs. Eddy's 
teachings tend to utter demoralization, while the char- 
acter of Madame Blavatsky was the worst possible 
commentary on her doctrines. Madame Blavatsky 
did not unfold any very coherent system of creation, 
but as she claimed that her gnosis was the same as that 
historically associated with the names of Marcion, 
Basilides and Valentinus, w T e may rest assured that she 
held devoutly to the demiurgic scheme. In Mrs. 
Eddy's system, Adam takes the place of the Gnostic 
demiurge, or w^orld creator. Christian Science agrees 
with Theosophy as that agrees with Buddhism, and 



266 Christian Science. 

all with the Gnostics, in teaching the doctrine of pre- 
existence and re-incarnation, making salvation con- 
sist in "breaking away from the mutations of time 
and sense/' Both agree that the fallen race is to be 
elevated into a union or spirit marriage with the 
Christos, and the harmony in which human person- 
ality disappears is the heaven to which they look. All 
this is heathenism, which has come down through the 
centuries. The old wine of false doctrine has been 
transmitted rank, whole and entire, unchanged in 
labels, skins cr contents. 1 It is to-day, as it was in the 
time of Paul, an opposition of "science, falsely so- 
called," a wisdom that is not from above. 

1 A summary of the evidence in the premises may be found 
in my paper, "An Old Enemy with Two New Faces," in the 

Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 1899. 



XVII. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE WORSHIP AND SACRA- 
MENTS. 

Christianity is, more than any other, a religion 
of prayer. It teaches the privilege and manifold ben- 
efits of supplication, praise and thanksgiving; and it 
bids believers speak to themselves and to each other 
in "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing 
and making melody in their hearts to God." And, 
in addition to the verbal expression of our faith, 
joy, adoration, penitence and holy desires in our 
prayers and praises, we are bidden to remember our 
Lord in the supper which he ordained, and to admin- 
ister to all who are admitted into the church the 
sacrament of baptism, which is at once the sign and 
seal of the blessings of the covenant of grace. 

Touching all these particulars of Christian worship, 
the directions of the Scriptures are clear and minute. 
We are bidden to worship the Lord in the beauty of 
holiness. All men everywhere are bidden to pray, "lift- 
ing up holy hands unto God, without wrath or doubt- 
ing." We possess the original hymn-book of the 
church in the Psalms of David, and many hymns have 
come to us from the earliest ages of the Christian era. 
We are told what is the nature, and have in the Word 
many examples of the form, of prayer. And as to the 
sacraments, the elements, if not the mode of adminis- 
tration, are plainly prescribed in each case. Water 



268 Christian Science. 

is to be used in baptism, and the form of words is pre- 
scribed ; bread and wine are to be used in celebrating 
the Lord's Supper, and the memorial, covenant and 
prospective character of the feast is plainly set forth. 

The worship of any religious organization must of 
necessity be a concrete embodiment of its doctrinal 
system. Prayer has its theology. No man can sin- 
cerely preach the gospel and at the same time offer 
prayers that contradict the doctrines which he has 
proclaimed. Every hymnal used in the various 
churches of Christendom is a system of theology, more 
or less elaborate. Sacramental forms are impressive 
ritual presentations of Christian doctrine, as taught 
by the several churches of Christendom. Thus Rome, 
in her "sacrifice of the mass" and "holy eucharist," 
associates the doctrine of Christ's perpetual re-incar- 
nation and perpetual sacrifice with the Lord's Supper, 
and makes every wafer and every particle of it a 
whole Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity. Her 
baptismal formulas teach baptismal regeneration. 
Her prayers teach the doctrine of purgatory, the in- 
vocation of the saints, the intercession of the living 
for the dead, the worship of Mary, and much else. 
Her hymns express the same doctrines that are set 
forth in her ritual and embodied in her seven sacra- 
ments. 

It is natural, therefore, that Christian Science wor- 
ship and sacraments should differ materially from 
the simple cultus of Christianity as it came to us from 
the apostles. But we can hardly repress a feeling of 
amazement at the discovery that Mrs. Eddy has not 
only introduced a system of doctrine alien to the 
teachings of prophets and apostles, but has even 
sought to revolutionize the worship of the church, 



Christian Science. 269 

and to set aside altogether its sacramental observ- 
ances. Her method is not opposition, but substitution. 
She retains prayer, hymn-singing, and sacramental 
rites, but each becomes, in her system, something en- 
tirely different and distinct from Christian worship 
as commonly understood and practiced. 

Christian Science has its churches and its stated 
services. It counts among its pastors some men of 
respectable ability. There is much plausibility in the 
new gospel as proclaimed by its "lecturers ;" but when 
we look into its worship we find hardly so much as a 
husk of true Christian devotion. 

Aside from the preaching, we presume the services 
held in the "Mother Church/' which is dedicated to 
the "dearest mother" of the new sect, may be con- 
sidered typical of the services held elsewhere by this 
unique organization. Mrs. Eddy, unwilling, it would 
seem, to have her doctrine diluted at the fountain 
head, has designated her book Science and Health, 
and the Bible as the impersonal preachers in that 
particular church, the lesson sermon, as it is called, 
being an antiphonal reading from both books. These 
lesson sermons are the same as those published in the 
Christian Science Quarterly, and are used in all the 
churches. This antiphonal reading serves several val- 
uable purposes. One is, to emphasize the equal au- 
thority of the two books. Another is, to bolster up 
the teachings of Mrs. Eddy by what may seem to be 
Scripture proof. A third is to associate in memory 
the teachings of Mrs. Eddy with the words of Scrip- 
ture. All which, it will be observed, are valuable 
means of popularizing and impressing the great doc- 
trines which she has been commissioned to teach. 

Vocal prayer is not permitted, for reasons which 



270 Christian Science. 

will appear presently. The hymns used are those 
composed by Mrs. Eddy and other members of the 
sect. They are chiefly compositions, apostrophic and 
hortatory in character, in which Life, Truth and Love 
are lauded, and the changes are rung upon the Allness 
of God, the nothingness of matter, and the supremacy 
of mind, etc. Of Christian Science hymnology, the 
following, by lone G. Daniels, is, perhaps, a fair 
specimen : 

Look forth, Oh, conscious child of God, 

Into the spirit-realm of Mind; 
The path that Jesus Christ hath trod 

Is thy celestial joy to find. 
Across the day no night hath spanned 
The sea, sun-kissed from land to land. 

Look forth ! and in the Master see 

The perfect life thine own should be. 

Shut the material doors of Sense, 
And let the Soul look forth alone. 

The mortal mind is blind and dense, 
And hath no being of its own; 

With Mary at the Saviour's tomb 

Its gaze is downward in the womb 
Of sensuous elements, to find 
The Lord of Life, Immortal Mind ! 

— Seed. 

The nebulous character of the teaching embodied 
in such hymns adds not a little to the mystifying effect 
of the antiphonal readings ; while the sense of com- 
plete stultification inevitably produced by the effort to 
believe the shadowy nonsense of Mrs. Eddy's philo- 
sophical creed, seems to have in it all the elements of 
profound religious emotion for those who have en- 
tered upon the "life of Science." 



Christian Science. 271 

As to sacraments, it is obvious that in a system 
which has for its supreme tenet the doctrine that the 
external world is unreal, there is no room for any sac- 
raments in which material symbols are used. Water, 
if used in baptism, and bread and wine, if used in the 
eucharist, would tend of themselves to upset the sys- 
tem by keeping alive some faith in a material world. 
Besides, if Mrs. Eddy and her followers should con- 
tinue to use the forms of orthodoxy, many would 
unconsciously imbibe orthodox notions simply from 
the use of such forms. Hence there must needs be a 
complete divorce of Christian Science sacraments 
from all orthodox observances. 

Mrs. Eddy defines baptism as "purification from 
error," "submergence in Truth," and from this it is 
evident that the only baptism which obtains in the 
new church is simply conversion to Christian Scien- 
tism. Speaking of baptism, Mrs. Eddy quotes also 
2 Corinthians v. 8, as intimating also that the real bap- 
tism of the soul is never accomplished until one is as- 
similated with the "Universal Life." The first bap- 
tism her followers receive is "John's baptism," in the 
act of receiving her doctrines. The final baptism, un- 
like other Christians, she defers to a future life. So 
here is a very considerable difference, emphasizing 
a new interpretation of the Master's words, "He that 
believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." 

The divergence between Christian Scientism and 
evangelical Christianity is no less glaring in the 
teachings of Mrs. Eddy as to the Lord's Supper. The 
Master said, "Do this in remembrance of me." His 
command was specific and perpetual, and was so 
understood by his apostles. Paul rebukes the Corin- 
thians for their riotous and unbrotherly manner of 



2J2 Christian Science. 

celebrating this feast of the Lord, and while pointing 
out the way in which it is to be decently observed, he 
says, "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death until he come." 
It is a sacrament, pledging, the believer to continued 
faith and diligence ; it is a spiritual partaking of 
Christ ; and it is retrospective as to our Lord's death, 
and prospective as to his second advent. But, as we 
have seen, Mrs. Eddy thinks the second advent took 
place when she received her "feeble revelation," and 
it is of course superfluous to keep a feast in prospect 
of a past event ! Moreover, the bread which she dis- 
tributes to her disciples as the bread which came down 
from heaven, is Truth, which is to say, her own in- 
spired doctrines. Therefore, her eucharist is "spir- 
itual communion with the one God," her "cup is the 
cross," her wine the "inspiration of Love — the 
draught our Master drank and commended to his fol- 
lowers." (Science and Health, p. 340.) "If Christ, 
Truth, has come to us," she argues, "no commemo- 
ration is requisite ; for he is Immanuel, or God with 
us ; and if a friend be with us, why need we memo- 
rials of that friend ?" < p. 339.) 

This is evidently a view of the matter which did not 
occur to Paul and the other apostles. They rejoiced 
in his perpetual presence in the ministry of his Spirit ; 
but they also remembered his saying, "Me ye have not 
alway." Although abiding with his followers in the 
fellowship of the Spirit, he was "absent from them in 
body," and there was a blessed and glorious sense in 
which he would come again, and with this hope of 
his coming they were wont to nourish their souls 
when they met at his table. 

But a very effective way to drive out old ideas is 



Christian Science. 273 

to substitute new observances for the old. And so 

we have the following somewhat indefinite account of 
a sort of saerament which Christian Scientists are 
wont to celebrate. It is celebrated, according to 
Mrs. Woodbury, "without wafer or wine." Says 
Mrs. Eddy: 

The spiritual meeting with our Lord, in the dawn of a 
new light, is the morning meal which Christian Scientists 
commemorate. They bow before Christ, Truth, to receive 
more of his reappearing, and silently commune with the Di- 
vine Principle thereof. They celebrate their Lord's victory 
over death, his probation in the flesh after death, its exem- 
plification of human probation, and his spiritual and final 
ascension above matter, or the flesh, when he rose out of 
material sight. — Science and Health, p. 340. 

Here is a new mystery, embodying a new T concep- 
tion of our Lord's death, resurrection, post-mortem 
life on earth, and final ascension. His earthly sojourn 
after the resurrection was a probation, and signified 
human probation. Probation when? Obviously, 
since his own was but an exemplification of ours, ours 
also is "probation in the flesh after death;" or, in 
other words, a re-birth, or awakening in another state 
of existence "as material as before. " From which it 
appears that Mrs. Eddy has made a most effective 
substitution in her "morning meal." The morning 
hour emphasizes the fact that it is not the Lord's Sup- 
per ; and as to doctrinal import, it sets aside both the 
atonement and the second advent, and makes devout 
Scientists bow the knee in order to "receive more of 
his reappearing," which is to say, more of "Science!" 

But the essence of all true worship is prayer. 
Christian hymns are but rhythmic prayers, set to 
music. Christian sacraments become the occasion of 



274 Christian Science. 

prayer, and without prayer are meaningless forms. 
We have seen Mrs. Eddy's sneer at the worship of 
evangelical Christians. What does she teach as to 
prayer ? 

Of prayer, as understood by Christians generally, 
there can be none in any system which makes God an 
abstraction, and regards man's mentality as an ema- 
nation from God, and destined to be re-absorbed into 
its source. Madame Blavatsky, speaking for theoso- 
phists, is perfectly candid. "Being well-occupied per- 
sons, we can hardly afford," she tells us, "to lose time 
in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. 
. . . We cannot pray to the Absolute, . . . there- 
fore we try to replace fruitless and useless prayer by 
meritorious and good-producing actions." 1 With this 
view Mrs. Eddy is in perfect accord. The doctrine 
of pardon, which, as we have already seen, is discarded 
by her, is vitally connected with the duty of prayer. 
That God does, upon certain conditions, pardon sin in 
answer to prayer, has been in all ages a cardinal doc- 
trine of the church. It is one of the chief particulars 
which differentiates the religion of Christ from Bud- 
dhism. The Buddhist, aside from the difficulty of 
addressing prayers to a pure abstraction, does not 
believe in pardon. He recognizes his subjection 
to the law of an inexorable karma, or retribution, 
which visits upon the soul in its present state of ex- 
istence the consequences of all sins committed in a 
former, and will visit upon it in its future life the 
results of sins unexpiated by the sufferings of this. 
Did he believe in a personal God, he could not, if 
he would, change this law of karma, through which 

1 Key to Theosophy, pp. 59, i$. 



Christian Science. 275 

eternal justice operates in every age, and upon every 
plane of existence. His only plan of salvation is to 
extinguish his passions and desires, and, by avoiding 
new sins, to exhaust the accumulated karma of his 
past lives, and so at last to enter nirvana. And Mrs. 
Eddy's doctrine is the same — 

The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. 
Divine life destroys death, truth destroys error, love destroys 
hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgive- 
ness. Does not God's pardon, destroying any one sin, 
prophesy and involve the destruction of all sin? — Science and 
Health, p. 234. 

It is not "scientific" to believe that God discrimi- 
nates between the objects of his mercy. If he saves 
one soul, he must save all. In the same strain, Mr. 
Mason declares, quoting "our Teacher," that — 

By the destruction of sin, every one must at some time be 
freed from it. . . . Man can never be lost, nor can he 
ever cease to exist. But if he is a wilful sinner he will suffer 
until the chastening or natural result of the broken law has 
become so severe that he will seek the repose and happiness 
of right doing. — Reminiscences of Class Room, p. 9. 

Hence it follows that consistent Christian Science 
prayer is nothing but an egoistic meditation, resem- 
bling a Buddhistic formula, without petition or 
thanksgiving. "The Infinite cannot do less than be- 
stow all good, since he is unchanging wisdom and 
love," declares Pope Mary ; and this being so, she hes- 
itates to approve any definite requests in prayer. 
True, our petitions may have some subjective effect. 
The broadest of Christians will admit so much. But 
we must not imagine that God is in any wise affected 
by our prayers. "We can perhaps do more for our- 



276 Christian Science. 

selves by our petitions ; but the All-Perfect does not 
grant them simply on the ground of lip-service" — the 
opposite, of course, being the orthodox doctrine in 
the premises. — Science and Health, p. 307. 

Our Lord commended importunity in prayer. But 
Mrs. Eddy is wiser than he, as witness the following : 

Goodness alone reaches the demonstration of truth. The 
habit of pleading with the Divine Mind, as one pleads with a 
human being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly cir- 
cumscribed, — an error which impedes spiritual growth. — 
Ibid., p. 308. 

Here is the wisdom of the serpent. By inducing 
her followers to surrender the habit of asking God for 
needed grace, she will succeed in cutting up all 
rational faith by the roots. So long as they continue 
to repeat such humble ascriptions of praise and 
thanksgiving and such petitions for divine help as 
God's saints in all ages have been wont to use, they 
will be proof against her vague doctrines in regard to 
the conglomerate abstractions which she would fain 
substitute for the God and Saviour revealed in the 
Word of truth. She proceeds, therefore, to argue 
against prayer with as much cogency of logic as a 
Voltaire or a Tom Payne ever exhibited : 

God is Love. Can we ask him to be more? God is Intelli- 
gence. Can we inform the Infinite Mind, or tell him any- 
thing he does not comprehend? Do we hope to change per- 
fection? Shall we plead for more at the open fount, which 
always pours forth more than we receive? Does spoken 
prayer bring us nearer the source of all existence and bless- 
edness? — Ibid., p. 308. 

Of course not, we are to understand. This would 
be but asking God to be God, and would there- 



Christian Science. 277 

fore be but a vain repetition. It is not a sensible 
thing to do, this thing of pleading for pardon and 
asking a liberal outpouring of benefactions. "It is 

only necessary to avail ourselves of God's rule, in 
order to receive a blessing." — Science and Health, 
p. 308. 

True prayer, according to this new reformer, is 
"the habitual struggle to be good" (p. 309). To 
enter into our closet means to enter "the sanctuary of 
Spirit, whose door shuts out sinful sense, but opens 
to Truth, Life and Love." There can be no real 
prayer in the spiritual exercises of those who refuse to 
obey the new gospel. They deliberately refuse to en- 
ter into their closets ! 

Moreover, the world at large is making a grave 
mistake in uttering audible prayers. In order to pray 
aright, we must "close the lips and silence the ma- 
terial senses." This was a part of the matter which 
the poor carpenter of Nazareth did not know enough 
to explain. But Mrs. Eddy, having quenched her 
soul's thirst by studying Buddhism, has a "Master 
thought" which makes her wiser than the ancients. 
In the simplicity of his mind, Jesus approved audible 
prayers, himself prayed aloud, and gave to his disci- 
ples a form of prayer. But, says Mrs. Eddy, while 
"audible prayer is impressive," and "gives momen- 
tary, solemnity and elevation to thought," it cannot 
produce "any lasting benefit," its motives embracing 
"too much error to greatly forward Christian senti- 
ment." Here, also, is evident the satanic method in 
her madness. She sees that all who continue to pray 
as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, will be unlikely 
to heed her teachings. Hence she urges gravely that 
such prayer "gives occasion for reaction unfavorable 



278 Christian Science. 

to spiritual growth" — i. e., for advancement in her 
way of thinking — and "militates against sober resolve, 
and a wholesome perception of God's requirements." 
Such "wholesome perception" must also of necessity 
include the conviction that our chief duty is to take 
Science and Health as the chief rule of our faith and 
practice. And having argued against prayer in such 
fashion, she indulges in a little mild ridicule of ortho- 
dox prayer. She hints that it is usually a self-satisfied 
ventilation of fervent sentiments, and declares that 
it makes us hypocrites and leads us into temptation, 
etc. — Science and Health, pp. 306-322. 

Much that she says about prayer is true and just, 
and were it not in an essay against all real prayer, 
would serve some good purpose. But prayer that is 
not petition is not prayer at all. It may be praise or 
thanksgiving, both of which are indispensable in 
Christian worship ; but it is not prayer. Our Lord 
himself defines prayer as asking, and whenever sinful 
man ceases to ask, he will cease to receive the grace 
lie needs. No amount of sentimental desire and de- 
vout meditation can avail to substitute this duty. It 
is a primary law of the spiritual kingdom, "Ask 
and ve shall receive." "Ye receive not, because ye ask 
not." 

How Mrs. Eddy would have us pray we may under- 
stand from her new version of the Lord's Prayer, 
which is perhaps the most successful of all her efforts 
to translate the Scriptures into the "new tongue" of 
Christian Science : 

Our Father who art in heaven, 

Our Father and Mother God, all-harmonious, 
Hallowed be Thy name. 

4 1 dor able One, 



Christian Science. 279 

Thy kingdom come. 

Ever just and omnipotent. 
Thy will be clone on earth as it is in heaven. 

Thy supremacy appears as matter disappears. 
Give ns this clay onr daily bread; 

Thou fittest our famished affections; 
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. 

And love is reflected in lore. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; 
And leavest us not in temptation, but freest us from 
sin, sick)iess and death; 
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for- 
ever. Amen. 
For thou art all Substance, Life, Truth and Lore for- 
ever. So be it. 

— Science and Health, Edition of 1886. 

This italicized version is a scientific prayer, and 
we are to understand its several phrases as giving the 
spiritual signification of their corresponding petitions 
in the Lord's Prayer. At a glance we see that it elim- 
inates every essential Christian doctrine from that 
matchless "form of sound words," and substitutes for 
it something different. There is no word of petition 
in it, nor is there anything like a recognition of God's 
personality. Its address introduces an idea as to the 
Divine Femininity, thus making God a dual monad, 
which is without any scriptural foundation. "Yea, 
she may forget, yet will not I," said Jehovah, and 
there is no need to add to the words of holy writ an 
ascription which is without basis either in the teaching 
or the example of prophets and apostles. The first 
petition, instead of being a prayer, is a mere opinion 
that God ought to be adored. The second petition, 
instead of expressing desire for the coming of the 
heavenly kingdom in this world, simply declares 



280 Christian Science. 

God's justice and omnipotence; meaning, we sup- 
pose, that the original was in error in its implication 
that God's kingdom had not come! The third peti- 
tion, instead of asking that God's will may be done, 
startles us with a dogmatic assertion that the divine 
supremacy can only appear when matter disappears. 
In the fourth we are not to pray for daily bread, but 
simply to acknowledge that God fills our "famished 
affections ;" nor may we, in the fifth, pray for the 
pardon of sin, since "love is reflected in love." There 
being no evil and no temptation, we may also, in the 
sixth, leave out those unrealities, and, instead of 
praying for deliverance from them, compliment our 
Father on having delivered us, and on the further fact 
that he is now freeing us from sin, sickness and 
death. The final ascription of dominion, power and 
glory to God, is turned into an abstract definition of 
Him, and the only particular in which this translation 
into the new tongue of Christian Science resembles 
the prayer as given in the Scriptures is the mysterious 
fact that Mrs. Eddy deigns to give the familiar trans- 
lation of the venerable word, A men. Even her mar- 
velous invention has its limits. She could not invent 
anything to take the place of amen, except a simple 
translation. She leaves us the first two words and 
the last, and all else is transmuted into something as 
foreign to its original meaning and purpose as it is 
possible to conceive. The prayer is no longer a 
prayer but a creed ; a creed, moreover, which is at 
war with every historic and distinctive doctrine of 
Christianity. No wonder this white-robed prophetess, 
with face all radiant from intercourse with her white- 
fingered angels, finds it necessary to keep at a safe dis- 
tance from conservatism, lest she soil her garments ! 



Christian Science. 281 

If her doctrine is the "vesture of Truth," then the 
words of Jesus are indeed black and smudgy with 
falsehood I 1 

1 It is singular that Mrs. Eddy, after having argued so 
strongly against audible prayer, and also against all definite 
pleas for pardon or for any other blessing, and exemplified 
her doctrines by such a thorough mutilation of the Lord's 
Prayer, has apparently revised her doctrine in the premises 
so that it may be said to have advanced backwards. In the 
later editions of her book she has made sundry changes in 
her "spiritualized" version of the Lord's Prayer. In the 
100th edition of Science and Health we have the following 
variations from the form as given above : 

Thy kingdom come, 

Thy kingdom is come, God is ever present and omnipo- 
tent. 
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, 

The supremacy of Spirit appears as the claims of matter 
disappear. 
Give us this day our daily bread ; 
Give us grace for to-day; 

Thou fillest the famished affections; 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, 

And leave us not in temptation, but free us from sin, 
disease and death; 
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for- 
ever, 
For thou art all Power, Substance, Life, Truth, Love. 

The second petition is changed into a declaration — "Thy 
kingdom is come," and "ever present" is substituted for 
"just" where it occurs in the older version. In the para- 
phrase of the third petition it is not matter that disappears, 
but the claims of matter, Mrs. Eddy having remembered, 
apparently, that matter, being an unreality, or a figment of 
human imagination, cannot be "scientifically" said to disap- 



282 Christian Science. 

It is interesting to note the variations which are 
the resultants from Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of prayer, 
as it flows farther and farther away from the foun- 
tain head. Mrs. Eddy's followers do not all of them 
dispense with prayers for pardon, nor absolutely deny 

pear. The fourth petition, which in the older "spiritualized" 
version had ceased to be a petition at all, is once more made 
a prayer; but, inasmuch as food is unnecessary, and "gusta- 
tory pleasure" an illusion, which all Christian Scientists can 
conquer, we are bidden to pray, "Give us grace for to-day." 
No change appears in the fifth petition, but in the sixth, 
which the earlier paraphrase had made declarative, the form 
of petition is restored, so that Christian Scientists were for 
a time made to acknowledge temptation, sin, disease and 
death as evils from which they must needs beg to be deliv- 
ered. The conclusion of the prayer is emended by inserting 
the word power and by leaving out "and" and "forever." 

Now, comparing this version of 1896 with that of 1898 — 
the 100th edition with the 154th — we find in the latter some 
startling changes. The third petition, instead of remaining 
as we have just given it, becomes 

Unable us to know, as in Heaven, so on earth, God is .III 
in AIL 

Thus we find her restoring in this place the form of peti- 
tion, which she had discarded in both her former versions. 
The fourth petition, made partly a prayer and partly a decla- 
ration in the version of 1896, becomes altogether a petition 
in that of 1898, and in addition to the request, "Give us grace 
for to-day," the "Scientist" is bidden to say, "Feed thou 
the famished affections." instead of saying, "Thou fillest the 
famished affections." In the last petition we find another 
decided doctrinal rebound. In 1896 Mrs. Eddy was teach- 
ing her children to pray for deliverance from temptation, 
sir. disease and death. Now, however, for the second 
time, if not oftener, their immaculate Mother has discovered 
that such prayer is unnecessary, making her latest inspired 



Christian Science. 283 

the reality of all human guilt. The following is an im- 
pressive prayer, taken from a text-book published by 

the President of the "New York School of Primitive 
and Practical Christian Science." This devout be- 
liever in a more extensive use of prayer than Mrs. 
Eddy seems to favor, advertises that his school will be 
free from "eccentricity, pretension and fanaticism !" 

Prayer for a Dyspeptic. 

Holy R.eality ! We believe in Thee, that Thou art every- 
where present. We really believe it. Blessed Reality, we 
do not pretend to believe, think we believe, believe that we 
believe. We believe. Believing that Thou are everywhere 

translation of this prayer into the "new tongue" identical 
w r ith that of 1886, only adding the word evil and spoiling the 
grammar. In repeating the latest paraphrase — unless a new 
one has been made since January 1, 1899 — Christian Scient- 
ists are now butchering both the Lord's Prayer and the 
Queen's English, saying, 

And thou leave th us not in temptation, but deliver eth us 
from evil — sin, disease and death. 

In the conclusion of the prayer as given in the form of 
1898, the words, "God is omnipresent Good," are inserted 
instead of "Thou art all Power." The thought of the Divine 
Goodness seems more comforting to Airs. Eddy than that of 
the Divine Power. 

And it is to be noted that in both the later versions which 
I have' quoted, Mrs. Eddy leaves out the venerable Amen, 
which in her first paraphrase she translated. "Bible schol- 
ars" have discovered, she tells us, that this word is an addi- 
tion to the Lord's Prayer by some copyist! From all which 
we gather that her method of explaining the meaning of the 
Scriptures is to turn them into something as unlike the origi- 
nal as is possible to imagine, and call that something the 
"spiritual sense." 



284 Christian Science. 

present, we believe that Thou art in this patient's stomach, 
in every fibre, in every cell, in every atom ; that Thou art the 
sole, only Reality of that stomach. Heavenly, Holy Reality, 
we will try not to be such hypocrites as every day of our 
lives to affirm our faith in Thee, and then immediately begin 
to tell how sick we are, forgetting that Thou art everything, 
and that Thou art not sick, and therefore that nothing in this 
universe was ever sick, is now sick, or can be sick. Forgive 
us our sins, in that we have this day talked about our back- 
aches, that we have told our neighbors that our food hurts 
us, that we mentioned to a visitor that there was a lump in 
our stomach, that we have wasted our valuable time that 
should have been spent in Thy service, in worrying for fear 
that our stomach would grow worse, in that we have dis- 
obeyed Thy blessed law in thinking that some kind of medi- 
cine would help us. We know, Father and Mother of us all, 
that there is no such thing as a really diseased stomach, that 
the disease is the Carnal Mind, given over to the World, the 
Flesh and the Devil; that the mortal mind is a twist, a dis- 
tortion, a false attitude, the HARMATIA of Thought. Shin- 
ing and glorious Verity, we recognize the great and splendid 
FACT that the moment we really believe the Truth, Disease 
ceases to trouble 11^; that the Truth is there is no Disease in 
either Real body or mind ; that in the mind what seems to 
be a disease is a False belief, a Parasite, a hateful excres- 
cence, and that what happens in the body is the shadow of 
the LIE in the Soul. Lord, help us to believe that All evil 
is utterly Unreal : that it is silly to be sick, absurd to be ail- 
ing, wicked to be wailing, atheism and denial of God to say, 
"I am sick." Help us to stoutly affirm with our hand in 
Your hand, with our eyes fixed on Thee, that we have no 
Dyspepsia, that we never had Dyspepsia, that we will never 
have Dyspepsia, that there is no such thing, that there never 
was any such thing, that there never will be any such thing. 
Amen. 

Christian Science is a higher and more practical 
Christianity, it is claimed. This is certainly a prac- 



Christian Science. 283 

tical prayer, and its humble confessions of sin arc 
quite edifying. Christian Scientists, bred to such 
praying, must needs have tender consciences. 

I have now shown the origin, the claims, the ab- 
surdities, the unverified miracles, the undeniable fail- 
ures, and the heathenish doctrines of Christian Scien- 
tism. It were idle to pretend that Mrs. Eddy has de- 
duced her system in its entirety from the Bible. She 
certainly did not go to the Bible for her theosophical 
terms and Buddhistic theology. When she says, 
therefore, that in all her studies the Bible was her only 
text-book, she is either using the word text-book in 
an accommodated sense, or uttering a colossal false- 
hood. She quotes a number of books by name, and 
derives suggestions from many which she does not 
name. She derived her idealism from Berkeley, her 
mental healing system from homoeopathic charlatan- 
ism and the mental and magnetic practice of Dr. 
Quimby, and her principal terms and doctrines from 
Oriental philosophy. Her claim of exclusive origi- 
nality is an "impudent pretense, and her assertion of 
plenary inspiration is a foul imposture. 

But, inasmuch as she professes to have derived her 
system from the Bible, save as that defective volume 
had to be supplemented by revelations made only to 
herself, it may be worth while to examine briefly her 
methods of interpretation. 



XVHI. 

MRS. EDDY AS AN EXPOSITOR. 

It will be readily seen by any one who will be at 
the pains to study Mrs. Eddy's peculiar interpreta- 
tions of Scripture, that in all her expositions her effort 
has been, not to explain, but to twist and distort the 
Bible, so as to make it agree with her "sacred discov- 
ery/' Her ignorance, cunning and presumption, al- 
ways in evidence, are nowhere so conspicuous as in 
those passages in her works in which she essays to 
play the role of expositor. Ignorant of Hebrew and 
Greek, guiltless of both classical and theological lore, 
claiming a degree of inspiration such as renders her 
independent of all commentaries, and yet driven, as 
we have seen, to appeal to "modern scholarship" when 
she thinks such appeal will strengthen her cause with 
the ignorant and the credulous, she has given to the 
world what she boldly terms a "Key to the Scrip- 
tures." 

The first thing that strikes the reader in examining 
her "Key" is that it is so small. It is, as it were, a 
skeleton key, if a key at all. It is made, evidently, not 
to fit the lock, as are keys used by householders, but 
resembles those which burglars use for the purpose 
of picking locks. Even this want of proper adapta- 
tion, however, could be overlooked, did it really suffice 
to open to our understandings a single passage. But 
it is safe to say that a more useless key for any one 
who has not alreadv taken leave of common sense 



Christian Science. 287 

could hardly be imagined. It not only docs not un- 
lock the door, but it seems to injure the lock, so that 
the bolt cannot be drawn. Christian Scientists, seek- 
ing- to use this infallible key, cannot enter themselves, 
neither can they lead anybody else into the great tem- 
ple of Revelation.* 

The first part of this magical Key, which proffers an 
explanation of all the dark sayings in the holy book, 
consists of an explanation, or translation into the 
"new tongue" of Christian Science, of the first chap- 
ter of Genesis and the first seven verses of the second. 
Proceeding still further in her exposition, the author 
first omits sundry passages, and then wanders away 
from the book altogether. The last fourteen pages of 
her commentary (?) on Genesis are devoted to a ram- 
bling essay on her favorite theme. The second part 
of Mrs. Eddy's "Key" is even more remarkable, both 
for what it does and for what it does not contain. It 
purports to be an explanation of the Apocalypse. 
Plunging at once, without so much as a word of ex- 
planation as to the reason of a proceeding so peculiar, 
into the middle of the book, she attempts to explain , 
one verse of the tenth chapter of Revelation, sixteen 
verses of the twelfth, two of the twenty-first, and one 
of the twenty-second chapter. To this fragmentary 
exposition she adds the twenty-third Psalm, which her 
inspiration has authorized her to alter by substituting 
the word Love wherever the name of the Lord occurs, 
making it read, "Divine Love is my shepherd," etc. 
The whole body of Scripture, aside from these few 
passages, is left unexplained, save as the defects of 
her "Key" are supplied by her Glossary. This glos- 
sary is unique. It seems to be intended to serve some- 
what the purpose of a Bible dictionary for "scientific" 



288 Christian Science. 

students of the Bible. It gives the "spiritual significa- 
tion' 7 of the names of sundry Old Testament worthies, 
together with the definitions, according to Mrs. Eddy, 
of various words and terms used in the Bible and in 
Science and Health. By using these definitions, to- 
gether with Mrs. Eddy's interpretations of such pas- 
sages in Genesis and the Apocalypse as are explained 
in the "Key," and such other interpretations of Scrip- 
ture as are found scattered through Mrs. Eddy's va- 
rious works, the Christian Science "student" can man- 
age, with proper straining, to turn many parts of the 
Bible into allegory, which is found to teach the main 
ideas of Christian Science. 1 

Mrs. Eddy's reasons for choosing the first and last 
books in the Bible for special explanation are plainly 
indicated. The book of Genesis contains a story of 
creation which must somehow be gotten out of the 
way, if Mrs. Eddy's doctrines are to be accepted. 
"The spiritual import of the Word, in its earliest artic- 
ulations," she accordingly informs us, "often seems 
so smothered by the immediate context as to require 
explication ;" while in the Xew Testament "so-called 
mystery and miracle, which subserve the end of nat- 
ural goodness, are explained by that love for which 
the weary ones sigh, when needing something more 
native to their immortal cravings than the history of 
perpetual evil." Moreover, "the living and real pre- 
lude to the elder Scriptures is so brief that it would 
almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality in 



1 As a specimen of this allegorizing method, note the fol- 
lowing: A writer in the Rostrum says David killed Goliath 
and four other kings, which means that the spiritual David, 
or Christian Scientist, must slay his five senses ! 



Christian SCIENCE. 289 

the whole narrative, as if reality did not predominate 
over the unreal," etc.: all which means that Bible 
students, unless specially instructed in Mrs. Eddy's 
doctrines, are little likely to find any Christian Science 
in Genesis, with its story of the creation, the first sin, 
and the fall, all which she has been inspired to deny. 

In treating of the Apocalypse she plunges at once 
in medias res, and sees in the angel who appears in 
the tenth chapter "clothed with a cloud and a rain- 
bow upon his head" nothing more nor less than 
" Divine Science. 51 " When understood, it [Divine 
Science] is Truth's prism and praise ; when you look 
it fairly in the face, you can heal by its means, and it 
hath for you a 'light that is above the sun,' for 'God is 
the light thereof/ ' In the twelfth chapter she sees 
even more than this. "The Revelator," she says, 
"saw also the spiritual ideal, as a woman clothed in 
light, a bride coming down from heaven, wedded to 
the Lamb of Love. To him the bride and the Lamb 
represented the correlation of divine Principle and the 
spiritual idea, God and his Christ, bringing harmony 
to earth." Again, "the woman in the Apocalypse rep- 
resents as man" — woman being, we must not forget, 
the highest species of man — "the spiritual idea of 
God, and God and man as the Divine Principle and 
the Divine idea." 

Here, then, we have tw r o reasons for her efforts to 
explain the Apocalypse. She thinks she sees Chris- 
tian Science in it, and also herself. Our suspicion, 
that Mrs. Eddy fancies herself to be the original 
of the prophet's picture, grows into certainty as we 
read on. "As Elias represents the Fatherhood of 
God through Jesus, so the Revelator completes this 
figure with woman, as the spiritual idea or type of 



290 Christian Science. 

God's Motherhood." In the judgment of her fol- 
lowers, Mrs. Eddy herself is the woman who has 
"completed the figure" by revealing the motherhood 
of God, and is therefore called [Mother by them all, 
as she has taught them to call her. She is, therefore, 
to be regarded as the "woman in travail, waiting to be 
delivered of her sweet promise, but remembering no 
more her sorrow for joy that the birth goes on; for 
grand is the idea and the travail portentous." Pro- 
ceeding, she explains that the opposition which her 
Science has elicited is a fulfillment of prophecy ; that 
the serpent [/. c, in the shape of orthodoxy] lies wait- 
ing to "bite the heel of Truth," and to "devour the off- 
spring of the spiritual idea [herself], which is pro- 
lific in health, holiness and immortality ;" that the 
"rod of iron" with which the man-child born of the 
woman — which is to say, redeemed humanity, born of 
Mary Eddy — is to rule the nations, is Divine Science ; 
and that this "immaculate idea, represented first by 
man [i. c, Jesus Christ], and last by woman [Mrs. 
Eddy], will baptize with fire;" which fire also must 
be Divine Science, since it will "burn up the chaff of 
error with the fervent heat of Truth and Love, melt- 
ing and purifying the gold of human character;" and 
that the war made upon her in her ministry "has im- 
pelled this idea [herself, that is] to rise to the zenith 
of demonstration, destroying sin, sickness and death, 
and be caught up unto God — be found in its [her] Di- 
vine Principle." She is fully confident of her ability 
to guide the redeemed race — Christian Scientists — 
into all truth and on to glory ; for, like the pillar of 
fire and of cloud, this "spiritual idea" (herself) will 
"guide all right desires in their passage from sense 
to Soul, — from a material sense of existence to the 



Christian Science. jgi 

spiritual, — up to the glory prepared for them who love 
God." She is confident that she will not be without 
allies in her holy war. "In this age the earth will 
help the woman; the spiritual idea will he under- 
stood/' 

While it is true that she does not anywhere claim 
to be the woman spoken of by the prophet, she does 
claim to perform precisely the same functions which 
she assigns to the woman, and thus, by her own 
favorite hypnotic method of suggestion, hint to her 
children that which they now openly avow. That 
Mrs. Eddy is a new Theophany, performing a work 
of redemption complementary to that performed by 
our Lord, and necessary to its completion, and that 
she is the spiritual idea reflecting God's own light, 
and "wedded to the Lamb of Love," is, as we have 
shown, the belief of the new sect. This belief she has 
managed to originate and keep alive in such a way 
that the unwary can hardly tell how they attained to 
it. Thus, there is no mention of Mrs. Eddy in the 
following sentence : "This idea reveals the universe as 
secondary and tributary to Spirit, from which it bor- 
rows its reflected Substance, Life and Intelligence." 
But the simple soul reading these words with full 
faith in Mrs. Eddy will say, Has not Mrs. Eddy re- 
vealed to us that the universe is secondary and tribu- 
tary to Spirit? and that Man's only Life, Substance 
and Intelligence is reflected from God? And must 
she not be, therefore, the woman, or spiritual idea of 
whom the prophet speaks ? So they do conclude, with 
one accord. "The followers of Mrs. Eddy," says a 
former Christian Scientist, who knows whereof she 
speaks, "assert that these passages refer to Mrs. Mary 
Mason Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, who was born 



292 Christian Science. 

in the neighborhood of Concord, New Hampshire, 
nearly four-score years ago." As Mary was the 
mother of Christ, so is Mrs. Eddy held to be the 
mother of the new Christ, or redeemed humanity, 
which is to rule the world with Christian Science. 
Hence it is that her disciples exalt her, as we have 
seen, to a station of equality to that assigned by Ro- 
manists to the Blessed Virgin, and look forward to 
the time when all nations shall call Mrs. Eddy blessed. 

It is surely unnecessary to argue that Christian 
Science cannot be both the angel who makes his ap- 
pearance "clothed with a cloud," and the little book 
which that angel holds in his hand ; and if it is either 
of these it can hardly be also the rod of iron with 
which the child of the woman is to rule the nations. 
With quite as much propriety it might be claimed that 
John Bunyan, when lie wrote his Pilgrim's Progress, 
was guided by the Spirit of inspiration to make it all 
an allegory of Christian Science; and that Evangelist 
is Christian Science, the wicket gate is Christian 
Science, and that both Interpreter himself and the 
beautiful palace which he shows to the pilgrim; the 
wall that was called salvation; the porter, Watchful, 
and the maidens, Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and 
Charity, together with the pilgrims, Faithful, Great 
Heart, Christian and the rest — one and all stand for 
Christian Science. And yet this fairly illustrates the 
way in which Mrs. Eddy manages to see Christian 
Science in the Bible. She turns every narrative into 
an allegory, and makes every prophecy a prediction, 
and every name a symbol, either of Christian Science 
or its opposite, in every case backing stupendous as- 
sertions with others still more stupendous. 

The way in which Mrs. Eddy professes to arrive at 



Christian Science. 293 

some of her definitions is amusing. It was by apply- 
ing the reversible principle to certain Bibte statements. 

But the reversible principle, which is of doubtful 
utility in the manufacture of clothing, is manifestly 

inapplicable to many other articles of human use. We 
want umbrellas, for instance, and shoes that are not 
reversible. And so of Bible statements. The Bible 
tells us that God is light; but we do violence to the 
truth when we reverse the statement, and say that 
light is God. So also, when the Scriptures tell us 
that God is love, and that he is good, we are not war- 
ranted in reversing these statements, and saying that 
all love is God, and that all goodness is God. Yet 
this is precisely what Mrs. Eddy has done. Her fa- 
vorite name for the Divine Being is the double term, 
God, Good, which seems innocent enough until one 
gets at its real meaning. Then it is seen that she ac- 
knowledges no Divine Father, such as is the God and 
Father whom all other Christians are wont to worship 
and love, but in place of him would have us acknowl- 
edge Goodness, Love, Light, etc., as the "only living 
and true God." 

So, too, when she uses the double term, "Christ, 
Truth." Christ said, "I am the way and the truth 
and the life," meaning, as the church in all ages has 
understood him to mean, that he is the medium 
through which we approach God, the manifestation 
and proof of the divine veracity and the embodiment 
of gospel truth, and the source of all spiritual life. 
But when we separate and reverse the several parts 
of the proposition, and say that truth is Christ and 
that life is Christ, we utterly confuse what else had 
been perfectly intelligible, and make doctrines which 
it is doubtful if anv Christian Scientist is ready to 



1 



294 Christian Science. 

avow openly. It is a truth that water runs down hill, 
and we are compelled to say of every such proposition, 
"It is the truth/' Now, would it be correct to say that 
the truth that water runs down hill is Christ ? Mani- 
festly, we cannot identify Christ with every possible 
statement of facts. He is not the mere sum of all 
truth — an indefinite series of correct statements. 
Thus, too, when we say Christ is the life. We cannot 
reverse this, and say that life is Christ. There are 
various sorts of life — animal, vegetable and spiritual. 
To say that Christ is the sum total of all the life in 
the universe, is to make him, not the personal Friend 
and Saviour whom the Scriptures represent him to be, 
but an impersonal force and intelligence, diffused 
throughout the universe. That Mrs. Eddy and her 
followers do this, simply shows how far they have 
erred from the gospel made known to us in that book 
which she has termed "the chart of life, to mark the 
healing currents and buoys of Truth." 

Such a method violates every principle of language 
and of rhetoric. When we say that God is good, the 
word "good" is understood to be an adjective, de- 
scribing the quality of the Being whom we term God. 
When we reverse the proposition, this adjective has 
become a noun, with an entirely different meaning. 
As an adjective, the word "good," applied to any in- 
telligent being, describes moral character, implying 
the whole circle of praiseworthy qualities. But the 
same word used as a noun means benefit, blessing. 
Now, it is evident that, while God may be said to be 
our greatest good in the sense of being our highest 
blessing, it cannot be said that all blessing is God. 

Mrs. Eddy, moreover, while intimating that she 
knows what "tropes and metaphors" are, ignores all 



Christian Science. 295 

right interpretations of such figures of speech, when 
they would deprive her of a coveted proof-text. She 
converts tropical statements into literal at will, and 
then when it suits her convenience she takes the most 
evidently literal passages that are to be found in the 
Bible, and turns them into allegory, in order to twist 
out of them some seeming confirmation of her doc- 
trines. Thus, it is plain that when our Lord said, "I 
am the way and the truth and the life," he was not 
using the words in a severe literal sense, but meta- 
phorically, just as when he said, "I am the vine, and 
ye are the branches." But in her interpretation of the 
passage, Mrs. Eddy takes part of it literally, making 
Truth synonymous with Christ, but ignoring the fact 
that she must also, on the same principle, make life 
synonymous with him. The word Life, however, she 
has chosen to use as a synonym of God, and never 
uses it in speaking of Christ. Again, it is unquestion- 
able that the Bible uses the word "mother" in the 
commonly accepted sense, and that no sacred writer 
ever applies that word to the Divine Being. But 
Mrs. Eddy's Glossary makes the word a synonym of 
the Divine Being. Does this account for the fact that 
one of her followers was brought before a court 
charged with being insane, because she asserted that 
Mrs. Eddy, who has taught her followers to call her 
"Mother," was none other than God ? 

Another device of Mrs. Eddy, in her effort to make 
the Bible square with her doctrines, is direct contra- 
diction. Thus, God says, "The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die." He affirms, through the word of his Son, 
that a man may gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul. Now, Mrs. Eddy cuts the Gordian knot of 
difficulty in all such cases by simply contradicting the . 



296 Christian Science. 

Scriptures. She says that the soul cannot sin, nor can 
it be lost. If the Bible anywhere, or even Christ 
himself, says so, the Bible or Christ is mistaken. So, 
also, as to the judgment. "God," says Paul, "has ap- 
pointed a day in which he will judge the world by that 
man whom he hath ordained." Xo, says Mrs. Eddy, 
"no final judgment awaits mortals." Numerous 
other instances could be given in which this oracle of 
Concord has coolly set aside the very plainest state- 
ments of that book which she tells us was her "only 
text-book" in her laborious task of bringing forth her 
immortal "discovery." In such cases it is evident that 
we must choose whom we will believe. 

In spiritualizing the Scriptures. Mrs. Eddy gives 
many startling instances of her daring originality. 
Thus, she makes the question, "Adam, where art 
thou?" mean, "Consciousness, where art thou?" She 
tells us that Jacob at the brook Jabbok was alone, and 
wrestled with error, until at day-break the angel ap- 
peared, and gave him a new name. etc. Now, the in- 
spired story says that Jacob was alone: but it does 
not say that he wrestled first with error or with any- 
body or anything. Its plain meaning is, that he was 
alone until the "man," or, as the margin has it, the 
"prince of God" — presumably the "Angel of the Cov- 
enant" — "came and wrestled with him until the 
breaking of the day." By thus inserting ideas that 
were never, even in faintest degree, implied in the 
original, she is enabled to make any historical pas- 
sage teach Christian Science. Again, she tells us that 
Hebrews xii. 1, "Let us lay aside every weight, and 
the sin which doth so easily beset us. and let us run 
with patience the race that is set before us," does not 
mean, as Christians have alwavs understood it to 



Christian Science. 297 

mean, that we are to lay aside all sin and selfish- 
ness, and devote ourselves patiently to doing the 
will of God; but that we are to "put aside material 
self and sense, and seek the Divine Principle and 
science of healing-," or, in other words, be Chris- 
tian Scientists. Mrs. Eddy's works teem with such 
revolutionary interpretations of scripture. She would 
have ns believe that the stripes of Jesus, which heal 
our sin-wounded souls, mean the "denial of error," 
which is to say the denial of the assertion that Chris- 
tian Science is not the truth. The first command- 
ment means, when "spiritually interpreted, " "Thou 
shalt have no belief of life in matter ; thou shalt not 
know T evil, for there is one life, even God, Good," etc. 
That is, Thou shalt be a Christian Scientist ; for only 
in so doing canst thou acknowledge the true God, and 
escape the curse pronounced upon all idolaters. 
Paul's sublime argument for the safety of all be- 
lievers is, that "if, when we were enemies, we were 
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, 
being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." That 
is, as Jesus paid our debt to the violated law by his 
death, so, by virtue of his immortal life, will he make 
good to us his guarantee of salvation. He died to 
redeem us, and he still lives, to give us the benefits of 
the purchased redemption. Mrs. Eddy, however, in 
order to break the force of this passage, inserts the 
word seeming before the word death, makes life begin 
with a capital "L," and by these apparently slight 
alterations of the passage, makes it mean, "If we were 
reconciled to God by the seeming death of Jesus, we 
shall be saved by his God." To such devices she is 
driven by her determination to take out of the Bible 
every passage that teaches the reality and the vica- 



1 



298 Christian Science. 

rious character of our Lord's death, and even his 
personal immortality. 

Another favorite device of this infallible expositor 
is that of substitution. Thus, "When reading the 
Scriptures, the substitution of the word sense for soul, 
gives the exact meaning in a majority of cases." This 
artifice enables her to break the force of all pas- 
sages which teach that man is liable to lose his soul, 
and to suffer in the eternal world, and at the same 
time to deny the Christian doctrines of personal im- 
mortality and accountability. She is blind to the enor- 
mous absurdities in which this trick involves her, as 
is manifest from her use of the one hundred and 
fourth Psalm, the first verse of which she renders, 
"Bless the Lord, oh ! my sense, and all that is within 
me, bless his holy name;' Applying this principle of 
interpretation to one of our Lord's solemn warnings, 
the result is found to be startling. "What shall it 
profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his 
own sense ?" Aside from all questions as to the cor- 
rectness of this particular interpretation, it is evident 
to any one who has known much of Christian Science 
doctrine and mental healing that men and women may 
lose their sense, even in this world. Indeed, the only 
difference between these learned "Scientists" and their 
uncharitable critics, so far as the fate of the former 
is concerned, is this: The "Scientists" expect to lose 
their sense in some future life, and look forward to 
this loss as the heaven of which the Scriptures speak, 
whereas the cruel critics are so unkind as to hint that 
all who have accepted Mrs. Eddy as their spiritual 
Mother and guide may, according to their own creed, 
consider themselves already in heaven, inasmuch as 
they have already taken leave of their sense. And it is 



Christian Science. 299 

characteristic of Mrs. Eddy's expository inspiration 
that it enables her to make the same thing serve most 
contradictory uses, as when she makes the loss of 
sense the "second death/' as well as heaven. This is 
a discovery which ought to be patented. 

But there are some passages in which she cannot 
substitute the word sense for soul. Mrs. Eddy is 
equal to this as to all other emergencies, as we might 
expect an inspired "spiritual idea of God" to be. 
"The proper sense of the word soul can always be 
gained by substituting the word God where the deific 
meaning is required." In all other cases we may sub- 
stitute the word sense. Thus is she enabled to teach, 
on the one hand, that it is never the soul of any man, 
but only his sense of sin, that is lost, and on the other 
that God is the only Soul in the universe. Thus does 
she succeed in making the old Bible an entirely new 
book for her followers, and also in making the study 
of the Scriptures a task of surpassing interest and 
delight. "Scientists" profess to enjoy greatly their 
study of the Scriptures. There is so much in it that 
is new to their anointed eyes ! 

Still another of her expository inventions may be 
described as inflation and rejection. She first reads 
into a passage a meaning which no sane person ever 
dreamed of assigning to it, and then proceeds to dis- 
miss it as unauthoritative, and to explain it as "er- 
ror's" account. This is her method of interpreting 
the creation story. The latter part of the second chap- 
ter of Genesis, she tells us, "must be based on some 
hypothesis of error," because in it "Spirit is sup- 
posed to cooperate with matter in constructing man," 
and because the "preceding passage declares God's 
work to be finished." Either she does not know, or 



300 Christian Science. 

else ignores, the fact that the first chapter of Genesis 
and the first three verses of the second give, as the 
Christian world believes, a general account of crea- 
tion as a whole, and that the succeeding narrative 
gives a more particular account of the creation of 
man, of his probation, sin and fall, etc. Not even 
those "modern scholars," to whose authority she bows 
in conscious ignorance, have ever been able to find any 
material contradiction between the two accounts, and 
certainly none of them ever took the ground that in 
rhe second account, so-called, "Spirit is supposed to 
cooperate with matter in constructing man." She 
must know that this is not, and never was, the teach- 
ing of any orthodox body, or even of any respecta- 
ble orthodox writer, if indeed, she ever heard of such 
a doctrine before she saw it for her own purpose in 
the creation story as given by Moses. She has simply 
read into the book a meaning which nobody but her- 
self ever attached to it, and then proceeds to dismiss 
the whole account as mythical because of the ridicu- 
lous sense which she pretends to have discovered 
in it. 

But Mrs, Eddy's inspiration and genius both at- 
tain their highest triumphs in her Glossary. The im- 
mense spiritual discernment which she has exhibited 
in her definitions goes so far beyond the acumen of 
all other lexicographers, and she finds such a wealth 
of Christian Science in the Scriptures, when once she 
is permitted to apply her magical explanations to 
its proper names, that a sense of her inspiration grows 
upon her enraptured followers as they traverse the 
new regions of scriptural investigation thus opened up 
to them by their leader. Already we have had some 
samples of the marvelous meanings which Mrs. Eddy 



Christian Scien< 301 

has elicited from some plain words. Bui when we 
turn to this Glossary, and examine its definitions one 
by one, our wonder grows, until we are led to exclaim, 
Oh! the depth of this woman's cunning! Angels are 
"God's thoughts passing to man." Benjamin means 
"a physical belief as to life, substance and mind/' and 
also, among other things, "a gleam of the infinite idea 
of the infinite Principle, . . . that which com- 
forts and supports ;" which is to say, Benjamin means 
both the denial and the affirmation of Christian 
Science. Bride means "purity and innocence, con- 
ceiving man in the idea of God; the senses of Soul, 
which have spiritual bliss, and enjoy, but cannot 
suffer/' Bridegroom means "Spiritual understand- 
ing; the pure consciousness that God, the Divine 
Principle, creates man as his own idea, and is the 
only creative power." Canaan is "a sensuous belief ; 
the testimony of material sense." Children are "Life, 
Truth and Love's spiritual thoughts and representa- 
tives," and also "sensual and mortal beliefs," "counter- 
feits of creation, whose better originals are God's 
thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity," etc. But, 
not to delay further on this point, it is indeed amazing 
how many and what diverse things appear to Mrs. 
Eddy as proper synonyms of her sacred science. Dan, 
one of the sons of Jacob, means "animal magnetism," 
while Gad means "Science, spiritual Being, under- 
stood;" and so, likewise, Elias, Euphrates and Hid- 
dekel — two of the rivers of Eden — the new Jerusalem, 
and the Holy Ghost, all stand for Divine Science ; and 
the river Gihon, to the astonishment and confusion of 
all who oppose woman's suffrage, is found to mean 
"the rights of woman." 

These illustrations must suffice. A volume could 



302 Christian Science. 

be written, and a most amusing one, on the various 
devices which Mrs. Eddy has adopted in order to 
make the Bible agree with her theories. But after all, 
her secret dissatisfaction with her ludicrous perform- 
ance is manifest in various complaints which break 
the monotony of her boundless egotism. Often she 
complains of the inadequacy of the translation of the 
Scriptures, and as a last resort asserts that the chief 
difficulty in the teaching of Christian Science lies in 
the imperfection of the English language. "English/' 
she informs us, "is inadequate to the expression of 
spiritual conceptions and propositions, through the 
use of material terms." The trouble is, not that the 
English language is such an imperfect vehicle of 
thought, but that Mrs. Eddy neither fully compre- 
hends the thoughts which she would set forth, nor the 
language which she is compelled to use. She is a 
striking specimen of a type of teachers whom Paul 
describes in his First Epistle to Timothy: 

"Now the end of the commandment is charity out 
of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith 
unfeigned : from which some having swerved, have 
turned aside unto vain jangling; desiring to be 
teachers of the law ; understanding neither what they 
say, nor whereof they affirm." 

( )r, to adopt her own paraphrase of the apostle's 
words, which she applies to "error" : "The mark of 
ignorance is on" her "forehead, for" she "neither 
understands nor can be understood." 



XIX. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

" Christian Science" originated in conscious 
charlatanism and fallacious reasoning, if the testi- 
mony of its founder is to be believed. If we credit 
the testimony of her rivals, which is abundantly cor- 
roborated by her own published statements, the sys- 
tem which she claims to have discovered in 1866 had 
been, in all its main features, taught for years before 
his death by Dr. P. P. Quimby, at whose feet Mrs. 
Eddy sat during his later life, and in whose foot- 
steps she professed to be following even after his 
death. Mrs. Eddy's claim, that she received her doc- 
trines by direct revelation, is thus disproven, not only 
by the intrinsic absurdity of the doctrines themselves, 
but also by the abundant evidences that she had been 
taught the same theory some years before she pro- 
fessed to discover it. Under the mask of saintly 
charity, she strives to conceal a bitter and implacable 
enmity toward true scriptural Christianity. Profess- 
ing to revere the Bible as "the chart of human life," 
she and her followers are sparing no efforts to set 
aside that venerable volume in the interests of a book 
which is destined to be regarded in time to come as a 
monumental exhibition of ignorance, incapacity and 
unreason, and as a sad commentary upon the gulli- 
bility of mankind. "Christian Science" has developed 
into a new and fanatical Mariolatry, in which the wor- 
ship of Mary Eddy exceeds, in all but its ritual, the 



304 Christian Science. 

exalted homage paid by the Roman Catholic and 
Greek Churches to the mother of Jesus. Its philos- 
ophy violates every principle of reason, and involves 
its votaries in innumerable absurdities and inconsist- 
encies. Its alleged miracles are, so far as they can 
be verified, due either to mere coincidence, or to the 
operation of mental factors now universally recog- 
nized and taken into account in the practice of all in- 
telligent physicians. Its curative methods are based 
chiefly upon the hypnotic principle of suggestion, and 
according to the testimony of its own adherents it 
labors under the suspicion of affording to its prac- 
titioners unbounded opportunities for hypnotic im- 
position. Its failures are so many and so signal as to 
furnish a sufficient refutation of its claim to be a 
divinely revealed system by means of which all dis- 
eases can be healed on "a demonstrable principle." 
Its doctrinal system is diametrically opposed to the 
teachings of the Scriptures touching God and man, 
the creation, the doctrines of grace, the moral status 
and final destiny of the human race, as to angels and 
demons, and as to the future life. Discarding the 
Christian sacraments instituted by our Lord and cher- 
ished in the church from the days of the apostles, it 
substitutes rites that are anti-Christian both in spirit 
and in feature. When compared with modern The- 
osophy and with ancient Gnosticism, this new creed 
is found to agree with both in its unscriptural tenets, 
and to have borrowed from the former a large part of 
its nomenclature. And, lastly, its interpretations of 
the Scriptures exhibit boundless ignorance, stupidity 
and presumption — interpretations so unwarranted, 
either by sound scholarship or sound reason, that it 
seems passing strange that any rational soul should 



Christian Science. 305 

be attracted to such a chaff-heap in search of spiritual 

food, and stranger still that any sane mind can be 
satisfied with such bold travesties of scriptural ex- 
egesis. 

Christian Science is both a foul imposture and a 
heresy ominous of danger to the church of Christ, 
and of peril to immortal souls. It is a so-called 
science which ignores God-given facts ; a philosophy 
which stultifies God-given reason ; a religion which 
thrusts aside a God-given revelation ; a theology 
which abolishes God while pretending to deify mortal 
man; a Christianity w T hich, after dishonoring Christ 
by every possible denial of his word, presents him 
to us as a phantom Saviour who disappeared more 
than eighteen centuries ago — a Saviour who never 
did, and never can, save a soul, and who, having gone 
from earth, will never again return to bless his wait- 
ing and longing church. In a word, it is a philosophy 
without wisdom, a science without facts, a religion 
without rational worship, a theology without a God, 
and a Christianity without a Christ. 

This new T rehash of ancient heresies, not only in its 
name, but in its spirit and substance, fully merits the 
description of error long ago given by Paul, and once 
more makes timely his warning to every man who 
bears a responsibility like that which rested upon the 
young pastor of the church at Ephesus : 

"Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoid- 
ing profane and vain babblings, and 

OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE, FALSELY SO-CALLED, 

which some professing, have erred concerning the 

faith r 



INDEX 



[// has been the author 's aim to make this Index sufficiently 
complete to enable the reader to find readily (/) the page or 
pages in which any particidar topic referred to in this book 
is discussed ; (2) the page or pages on which the teaching of 
Christian Science authorities as to any phase of their so- 
called science is presented ; (3) all citations from authors 
quoted ; and (4) all cases of healing referred to. The 
figures refer to the pages of this book.'] 

Absent treatment, Christian Science, failures of, 161, 166. 
Adam, explosive definition of by Mrs. Eddy, 221. 

name of, divided by Mrs. Eddy for expository purposes, 223. 

origin of, according to Mrs. Eddy, 224. 

not the first man, according to Mrs. Eddy, 194. 

was the creator of the world, according to Mrs. Eddy, 
220 ; also according to Brigham Young and the Mor- 
mons, 220. 
Adderton, Mrs. R. Stokes, statement of, as to remarkable 

answer to prayer, 104. 
Adventist Church, origin of, 13. 
Africa, witch doctors of, cures by, 106. 
Age, youthful appearance in, 99. 
Ages, should not be recorded, says Mrs. Eddy, 98. 
Alcoholism, facts of, vs. Christian Science, 177. 
Alienation, domestic, produced by Christian Science, 214. 
Americanitis, poem by Mrs. Woodbury, quoted, 166. 
Angels, personal, existence of, denied by Christian Science, 

241. 
Anti-fat, Christian Science article of, unsatisfactory, 96. 
Apostles, controversies of, 21, 22; miracles of, 151 ; no fail- 
ures of, in healing, 152. 



308 INDEX. 

Articulata, mollusca, etc., created by mortal thought, ac- 
cording to Mrs. Eddy, 220. 
Atonement, vicarious, denied by Christian Science, 80, 81, 

195, 198. 
Attention, expectant, effects of, 115, 116. 
Authors and books, etc., quoted: 
Arena, The, 38, 46, 52, 206, 239, 243. 
Beaupre, Dr. 176. 
Bhagavad Gita, 260, 261. 

Blavatsky, Helena P., Key to Theosophy, 249, 251, 254-6, 274. 
Boston Herald, 66. 

Brown-Sequard, Dr., Lectures on the Physiology of Cen- 
tral Nervous System, 174. 
Buckley, D. D., LL. D., Rev. J. M., Faith Healing, Chris- 
tian Science and Kindred Phenomena, 95, 11S-19-20, 
127-S, 147, 173-4-5, 24S. 
Burns, Robert, Poetical Works, 134. 
Carpenter, Dr. W. B., Mental Physiology, 113. 
Cocke, Dr. J. R., Hypnotism, 123, 12S. 
Channing, D. D., Rev. W. E., Works, 192. 
Charlotte (N. C.) Observer, 167. 
Charleston (S. C.) Sunday News, 60. 
Christian Science Journal, 53, 54, 61, 133. 
Christian Science Sentinel, 6S. 

Christian Science Series, 31, 54-5, 96, 194, 235, 255. 
DuBose, D. D., Rev. H. C, The Dragon, Image and 

Demon, 260. 
Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker, 

in Christian Science Sentinel, 6S. 
in Christian Science Series^ 194, 234-5, 255. 
in Rudiments and Rules of Christian Science, 57, 229. 
in Unity of Good, etc., 56, 140, 189, 200, 216, 255. 
in Science and Health, 31-6, 48, 50-2-4-5-6-7-8, 73-6-7- 
S-9, So-1-2-6-8-9, 90-1-2-3-4-7-S, 100-1, 140-1-2-3- 
4-5, 153-4-5-6-7-3-9, 160-1-3, 1S1-2-3-9, 194-7-3-9, 
294-6-9-10-13-15-16-19, 220-1-3-6-8-9, 230-2-3-4-5-6- 
7-S, 240-1-2-S-9, 250-1-4-9, 261-2, 271-2-3-5-6-7-8-9, 
281-2-7-8-9, 290-1-3-4-6-7-8-9, 300-1-2. 



INDEX. 

Authors and books, etc., quoted — 

Encyclopedia Brittanica, 171, 202. 

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, Medic a I Essay s % 43. 

Homiletic Review, 25. 

Independent, 31. 

Judge, William Q., Ocean of Theosophy, 246. 

Kansas City Star, 16. 

Lafferty, LL. D., Rev, J. J., in Richmond Christian Ad- 
vocate, 171. 

Law Notes, 17, 18. 

Macaulay, History of England, 105. 

Marston, Dr., 39. 

Mason, Rev. Frank E., Reminiscences of Class Room, 192-3, 
201-5-8, 275. 

Murchison, Dr., 115. 

New York Mail and Express, 72. 

Paris, Dr., 124-5. 

Payne, Dr. R. L., Mental Factors in the Cause and Cure 
of Disease, 115, 155-6. 

Peoria (111.) Jour nal, 67. 

Pepper, Dr., Sy stein of Medicine, 173-5. 

Reed, D. D., Rev. R. C, in Presbyterian Quarterly, 14. 

Rostrum, The, 75, 85, 193-4-5, 288. 

Seed, The, 75-6, 89, 182, 195-6, 204-5, 230-1. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Poetical Works, 252-8. 

Tuke, Dr., Influence of the Mind on the Body, 102, 115. 

Wilmans, Helen, 162. 

Wilson, Dr. Andrew, in Harper's Magazine, 130. 

Woodbury, Mrs. J. C, 65, 132. 
• Arena. See Arena. 
Christian Science Voices, 55-7, 63-4, 214. 
War in Heaven, 35, 63, 65, 239. 

Wordsworth, William, Poetical Works, 252. 
Auto-Hypnotism, 128. 

Baptism, is what in Christian Science, 271. 
Barnes, Geo. O., a faith healer, 104. 

Bathing, opposed by Mrs. Eddy for ''scientific" reasons, 92. 
Beaupre, Dr., on Cretinism, 176. 



*♦ 



3IO INDEX. 

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, vigor of, 99. 
Berkeley, Bishop, idealism of, 85-6. 
Bethshan, cures at, 103. 

Boardman, Rev. W. E., faith cures by, 103. 
Body, influence of mind on the, 169. 
Boils, "scientific" prescription for, 56. 
Bread pills, an efficient purgative, 147. 
Breda, siege of, effect of delusion during, 121. 
Bright's Disease, sometimes imaginary, 148. 
Buckley, LL. D., Rev. J. M. See Authors. 
Buddhism, Mrs. Eddy in agreement with, 245-262. 
Buzzell, Dr., cured cholera by thrashing patient, 122. 
Cancer, cure of, reported by Mrs. Eddy, 140. 
Cholera, case of, cured by thrashing, 122. 
Christ, atonement of, denied by Christian Science, 80, Si, 
195-8. 

birth of, spiritual and not physical, according to Christian 
Science, 202. 

death and resurrection of, denied by Christian Science, 
199, 200-1. 

divinity of, denied by Christian Science, 192-3. 

doctrine of Mrs. Eddy concerning, 192-209. 

place of, in Scripture, 190-1. 

second advent of, occurred in 1S66, according to Mrs. 
Eddy, 206. 

sufferings of, their reality denied by Christian Science, 
299. 
Christian Science, animus of, toward the church, 79- 82. 

absurdities of, S4-101. 

basis of truth in, 1 14-125. 

Buddhism by another name, 251, 261-2. 

built on law of suggestion, 132. 

challenge of, 31. 

claims of, 1S-19, 33-5-6. 

compared with faith healing, 102-113. 

compared with Hypnotism, 126-138. 

compared with Theosophy, 245-266. 

compromise with, impossible, 19-20. 



INDEX. 



3" 



Christian Science — 

contradicts Scripture, 185-6-7, 190-1-2-4-5-6-7-8-9, 200-1- 
2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, 215, 218, 220-1-2-5-6, 231-2-5-7-8, 240- 
1-2, 251-2-4-5. 

cost of instruction in, 36-7. 

dangers of, 18-19. 

doctrinal contents of, 181-302. 

failures of, 163, et seq. 

general view of, 31, et seq. 

Gnosticism revived, 263-5. 

gospel, a new, 33, 53-4~5- 

immoral tendencies of, 239. 

in conflict with the law of the land, 15-18. 

insanity results from faith in, 214-15. 

institutes, etc., 32-4. 

miracles of, examined, 139, et seq. 

misnomer, a, 33. 

not original with Mrs. Eddy, 44-5-6, 70^1. 

origin of, 43. 

practice of, rules for, 150-162. 

presents Mrs. Eddy as an object of worship, 59-65. 

pretensions of, to science, 34. 

services of, 269. 

sets aside the Scriptures, 77. 

statistics of, 30-1. 

terms of, obscure, why, 248. 
Christian Scientists, a growing body, 31-2. 

families of, notably childless, 239. 

worship their religion, 210. 
Clothing, unnecessary, according to Christian Science, 91. 
Cocaine habit cured by Hypnotism, 128. 
Cocke, Dr. J. R. See Authors. 
Consumption, cures of, reported by Mrs. Eddy, 140-1. 

cured by falling into water, 122. 

simulated by liver complaint, 148. 

spontaneous recoveries from, 117. 
Controversies of apostles, 21-2. 

of reformers, 23. 



312 INDEX. 

Controversy, church established by, 21-2-3. 

unwise deprecation of, 21. 
Cough, hysterical, cured by anger, 121. 

nervous, cured by Hypnotism, 14S. 
Creation denied by Christian Science, 219. 
Cretinism, facts of, conclusive against Christian Science, 

176-7. 
Criticism, cure by, 122-3. 
Coincidence, illustrated, 123-4. 
Cullis, Dr., faith cures by, 104. 
Dana, Charles A., vigor of, 99. 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, cure of paralysis by, with thermo- 
meter, 119. 
Death expected to disappear in triumph of Christian Science, 

87-8. 
Demonophobia, the wretched superstition of Christian 

Scientists, 243. 
Devil, is father of all who are not Christian Scientists, ac- 
cording to Mrs. Eddy, 42-3. 
Devils, existence of personal, denied by Christian Science, 

241-2. 
Diagnosis, possibility of mistakes in, 139-14S. 
Dipsomania, cured by Hypnotism, 12S. 
Discussion of Christian Science, probable benefits of, 25- 

26. 
Diseases which may be cured by Christian Science, 169. 
Dropsy, case of, cured by Mrs. Eddy, with unmedicated 

pellets, 42-3. 
Dyspepsia, simulates many other diseases, 14S. 
Ear, cut off, restored by Christ, 151. 
Eating, inconsistent'advice as to, 101. 

unnecessary, according to Mrs. Eddy, 101. 
Ecclesiasticus, opinion of, as to physicians, in. 
Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker, complains of imperfection of Eng- 
lish language, 302. 

considered a Jesus, 70. 

contradicts Scripture. See Christian Scienci . 

contrasted with Jesus, 39-40. 



INDEX. 313 

Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker — 

cures reported by, examined: cancer, 140; consumption, 
140- 1 ; crushed bones, 143-4; enteritis, 142 ; heart disease, 
1 60-1 ; hip disease, carious bone, etc., 145-6; ulcerated 
bowels, 144-5. 

defense of, against charge of plagiarism, 46. 

disclaimer of, examined, 68-9. 

does not heal sickness now, 40. 

egotism of, 48-50. 

expository tactics of, 286. 

face of, made to resemble Christ's in picture, 60. 

homoeopathy practiced by, before discovery of Christian 
Science, 42-3. 

identity of, with sun-clad woman of apocalypse, claimed, 
89-90. 

ignorance of, exposed, 51-2. 

infallibility claimed by, 54-5. 

life of, prior to "discovery'' of Christian Science, 42-6. 

logic, specimen of her, examined, 163. 

never made specialty of healing, 139. 

patients referred to students by, 139-40. 

plagiarism charged against others by, 47. 

regarded a new Theophany, 62-5, 72, 290-1. 

rhetoric, brilliant example of her, 210. 

teaching of, considered the Bread of Life, 63. 

teaching of, how received, 64-5. 

testimony of , against herself , 46. 

vanity of, 50. 

worshipped, 63-4. 
Faith healers, error of, no. 
Faith healing, accounted for, 109-10-14, et seq. 

compared with Christian Science healing, 1 12-13. 

instances of, 103, et seq. 
Flournoy, D. D., Rev. Parke P., opinion of, as to dangers 

of Christian Science heresy, 21. 
Foreordination, scouted by Mrs. Eddy, 254. 
Fox Sisters, imposture of, confessed and explained, 14. 
Frederic, Harold, death of, under Christian Science treat- 
ment, 167. 



314 INDEX. 

Freedom, of diet, exercise, etc., benefits of, 125. 
Future life, Christian Science doctrine of, 255, et seq. 
Gassner, Joseph, faith cures by, 103. 
Glossary, Mrs. Eddy's, 2S7, 300-1. 

Gnosticism, doctrines of, identical with those of Christian 
Science and Theosophy, 264-5. 

referred to in New Testament, 263. 

revived by Christian Science and Theosophy, 265-6. 
God, definition of, according to Christian Science, 1S2. 

immanence of, denied by Christian Science, 216. 

personality of, denied by Christian Science, 182,^'/^^., 
and 229. 
Greek Church, cures in, by faith, relics, etc., 105. 
Headache, cured by application of silver dollar, 119. 
Heart disease, case of, reported cured by Mrs. Eddy, 160. 

often simulated by indigestion, 14S. 
Heathen medicine men, cures by, 106. 
Hodges, Dr., cures nausea by hypnotism, 12S. 
Hohenlohe, Prince, faith cures by, 102-3. 
Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, opinion of, as to homoeopathy, 

phrenology, etc., 43. 
Hughes, Mrs. John H., case of rheumatism of, cured by 

earthquake, 120. 
Hymnology, Christian Science, specimen of, 270. 
Hypnotism, compared with Christian Science methods, 

132-5. 

curative powers of, 127-S. 

modus operandi oil 127, 129. 

nature of, explained, 129-30. 
Hypochondria, case of, mistaken for tumor, 14S. 

simulation of various diseases by, 147-8. 
Hysteria, simulation of various diseases by, 147-8. 
Idiocy, case of, cured by trephining skull, 174. 

congenital, facts of, conclusive against Christian Science, 
175-6-7. 
Immorality, caused by Christian Science, 214-15. 
Incantations of heathen priests cure disease, 106. 
Incredulity, spirit of, sometimes makes liable to imposture, 

131. 



INDEX. 315 

Indigestion, simulation of other diseases by, 148. 

Ingham, James, certificate of, examined, 140-1. 

Insane, hallucinations of, 99. 

Insanity caused by Christian Science, 214. 

Jesus, an idea, according to Christian Science, 202. 

a sentimental patriot, according to Christian Science, 196. 

conception and birth of, spiritual and not physical, ac- 
cording to Christian Science, 202. 

death of, denied by Christian Science, 200-1. 

divinity of, denied by Christian Science, 203. 

exists not only as diffused thought, according to Chris- 
tian Science, 204-5. 

humanity of, now non-existent, 203-4. 

not the Christ, according to Christian Science, 203. 

not the only begotten Son, according to Christian Science, 
207-9. 

pre-incarnation of, taught by Mrs. Eddy, 194. 

saves us by poising before us as a model, according to 
Christian Science, 195. 

sufferings of, denied by Christian Science, 195. 

sufferings of, hypnotic illusions, according to Mrs. Eddy, 
200. 

worship of, idolatrous, according to Christian Science, 
207-9. 
Johnson, Dr. James, opinion of, as to doctors, drugs, etc., 

44. 
Joints, contracted, cured by faith, 203-5. 
Kershaw, Thomas G., a Science healer, dies under "absent 

treatment," 166. 
Key to Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy's, 286-91. 
King, touch of, a cure for scrofula, 105-6. 
Knight, Newell, case of, cured by Joseph Smith, Jr., 107. 
Knitting needles, cure of rheumatism by, 119. 
Krackowitzer, Dr., cure of hysteria by, 119-20. 
Lameness, cures of, by faith, relics, etc., 103-5. 
Limbs, amputated, restored by Christ, 151. 

amputated, cannot be restored by Christian Science, nor 
grow again, 89. 



3l6 INDEX. 

Lobster's claw, reproduction of, Mrs. Eddy's argument 

from, 89. 
Man, accountability of, denied by Christian Science, 232. 

brotherhood of, how established in Christian Science and 
Theosophy, 258-9. 

definition of, by Mrs. Eddy, 213. 

eternal and infinite, according to Mrs. Eddy, 213. 

is God, according to Mrs. Eddy, 226. 

never created, according to Christian Science, 213-219. 

never fell, according to Christian Science, 226. 

not to be confounded with Adamic race, 226. 

perfect and sinless, according to Mrs. Eddy, 233-4. 

personality of, denied, 229-231. 

preexistence of, affirmed by Christian Science, 250-1. 

re-incarnation of, affirmed by Mrs. Eddy, 255. 

re-incarnation of, doctrine of, sad, 257-S. 
Manheim, Dorothea Trudel's cures at, 103. 
Marston, Dr., his account of the origin of the pharmaco- 
poeia, 94-5. 
Maternity, peculiar teaching of Mrs. Eddy as to, 244. 
Matthew, Father, faith cures by, 103. 

McGuire, Dr. Hunter, case of neurasthenia cured by, 122. 
Medicines, rest from, sometimes beneficial, 124-5. 
Mental Factors in Cause and Cure of Diseases, 114. 
Mind-cure, basis of, in natural law, 114. 
Ministry, Christian, obnoxious to Mrs. Eddy, Si. 
Miracles of Christian Science, 139-152. 

of Christian Science, differences between and those of 
Christ and his apostles, 15 1-2. 

of Mormonism, 106-8. 
Modesty, a "delusion of material sense,'' according to Mrs. 

Eddy, 92. 
Mormon, Book of, plagiarized by Joseph Smith, 13. 
Mormonism, growth of, 13-14. 
Morphine habit, cured by hypnotism, 12S. 
Mortals not man, according to Mrs. Eddy, 226. 
Murchison, Dr., testimony of, as to mental cause and cure of 

liver disease, 115. 



INDEX. 317 

Natural causes for alleged cures, in, 115. 

Nature, healing force of, 117. 

Nausea, cured by application of silver dollar, [19. 
cured by hypnotism, 129. 

Nervous agencies in cause and cure of liver disease, 115. 

Neuralgia, cure of, by hypnotism, 128. 

Neurasthenia, cure of, by whipping, 122; by hypnotism, 
127. 

Neuritis, ulnar, cure of, by hypnotism, 127. 

New York School of Primitive and Practical Christian Sci- 
ence, 283. 

Oil, anointing with, 103, in. 

Oneida Communists, cure by criticism practiced by, 122-123. 

Ovarian tumor, simulated by hysteria, 148. 

Pantheism, cheerlessness of, 257. 
defined, 188. 
taught by Christian Science, 188, 226, 248-9. 

Paralysis, cured by hypnotism, 127; by shock, 120; by sug- 
gestion and ridicule, 123 : by thermometer, 118. 

Pardon, Christian doctrine of, scouted by Mrs. Eddy, 254, 

275. 

Paris, Dr., opinion of , as to incompatible ingredients in pre- 
scriptions, 124. 

Payne, Dr. R. L., quoted, 115, 155-6. 

Pennypacker, Judge, decision of, in Christian Science case, 

15. 

Personality, defined, 184. 

of God denied by Christian Science, 182, et seq. 

of man denied by Christian Science, 227-230. 
Perkins, Dr., cures by, with tractors, 118. 
Philosophy, Christian Science, absurdities of, 84, et seq. 

Pythagorean, revived in Christian Science, 182. 
Physicians, possibility of incorrect diagnosis by, 139, 14S. 
Physiognomy, suggestions from, 116-17. 
Poisons, effects of, how accounted for by Christian Science, 

84-5. 
Post-mortem examinations, show spontaneous recovery 

from consumption, 117. 



318 INDEX. 

Practice, Christian Science, rules for, 164, et seq. 

Prayer, consists in what, according to Mrs. Eddy, 276-7 ; 
according to Madame Blavatsky, 274; defined by our 
Lord, 278 ; for healing, not necessarily answered by 
miracle, in ; for sick, warrant for, in Scriptures, 109-11 ; 
for a dyspeptic (Christian Science), 283 ; limitations of, 
no; Lord's, as translated into "new tongue" of Chris- 
tian Science, 279-83 ; no real, in Christian Science wor- 
ship, 276-7-S ; vocal, not allowed in Christian Science 
churches, 277-S. 

Prescriptions, ingredients of, fighting together in the dark, 
124-5. 

Protestant faith healers, cures by, 103-4. 

Pythagoras, teaching of, followed by Christian Science, 1S2. 

Quimby, Dr. P. P., author of term, " Christian Science," 145. 
originator of mental science healing, 44-5-6. 
treatment of Mrs. Eddy by, for palsy, 45. 
tribute of Mrs. Eddy to, 46. 

Raising the dead, not attempted by Christian Science heal- 
ers, 151. 

Reed, Dr. Charles A. L., challenge of, to Mrs. Eddy, 149- 
150. 

Relics, cures by, 104-5. 

Relapses, ignored in Christian Science practice, 15S. 

Resistance, moral, necessary in cure of morphine habit, etc., 
128. 

Rhetoric, specimen of Mrs. Eddy's best, 210. 

Rheumatism, cured by hypnotism, 127 ; by knitting nee- 
dles, 119; by scalding, 120; by shock, 115, 120. 

Rhode Island, Supreme Court of, decision of, in Christian 
Science case, 15-16. 

Rhubarb, dream of taking, effective as purgative, 147, 
taste and effects of, communicated to jelly by imagination, 
116. 

Roman Catholic faith healers, cures by, 103. 

Roman Catholic relics and miraculous waters, cures by, 105. 

Sacramental forms, doctrinal import of, 268. 

Sacraments, Christian Science, 271-3. 



INDEX. 319 

Science and Health, considered equal or superior to Bible, 

53-4- 

exalted claims of, 53-S. 

inspiration claimed for, 53. 

literary character of, 49, 50-2-3-4. 

miraculous, 55-6. 

quoted. See Authors. 

said to be the "little book" of Revelation x., 73. 

said to be the Christ, 54. 

said to be the Good Shepherd, 54. 

title of, seductive, 35. 
Scientific methods of investigation, ignored by Mrs. Eddy, 

165. 
Scriptures, the, contradiction of, by Mrs. Eddy, 1S6-9, 192, 
195-8, 208-13-18-23-26. 

Mrs. Eddy's interpretations of, 285, et seq. 
Scurvy, cured by delusion, 121. 
Second Adventists, origin of, 13. 
Self-mesmerization, 128. 
Shakerism, origin of, similar to that of Christian Science, 

70-1. 
Simpson, Rev. A. B., cures by, 104. 
Sleep-walking, in same category with hypnotic trance, 

130. 
Smollet, cure of consumption reported by, 122. 
Sovereigns, touch of illegitimate, could cure scrofula, 106. 
Spine, disease of, sometimes imaginary, 148. 

disease of, cured by hypnotism, 128. 
Spinoza, philosophy of, identical with that of Christian 

Science, 188. 
Spirit-rappings, origin of, 14. 
Spiritualism, origin of, in imposture, 14. 
Stigmatization, facts of, accounted for, 116. 
Suggestion, power of, 135-7; uses of, in Christian Science, 

132-3. 
Sullivan, Mrs., case of, 121. 
Sunshine from cucumbers, a Christian Science possibility, 

84. 



320 INDEX. 

Superstitions of Christian Science, 243. 
of Mrs. Eddy, 46. 

Surgery, Christian Science, a failure, S9-90. 

Talmage, D. D., Rev. T. DeWitt, vigor of, 99. 

Teeth, pain in ulcerated, relieved by application of silver 
dollar, 119. 

Theosophy, origin of modern, in imposture, 14 ; teachings of, 
similar to those of Christian Science, 245, et seq. ; terms 
of, identical with those of Christian Science, 246-7. 

Thermometer, cure of paralysis by, 11S. 

Thought, transference of, taught by Mrs. Eddy, 159, 243-4; 
by hypnotists, 161. 

Thrashing, cures by, 122. 

Time and space annihilated by thought, according to Chris- 
tian Science, 160. 

Tobacco habit, cured by hypnotism, 12S. 

Trance state, produced in Dr. Buckley's experiment, 127, 
130. 
simulation of acts in, 127, 130. 

Treatment, absent, 160; Christian Science rules for, 

153. 

Tuke, Dr., admits faith cures by Prince Hohenlohe, 102 ; by 
relics, etc., 105. 

Tumor, supposed ovarian, relieved by administration of 
ether, 14S. 

Typhoid fever, cured by Mrs. Eddy with diluted salt water, 
42. 

Van Der Mye, Dr. Frederick, testimony of, as to effect of 
delusion in epidemic of scurvy, 121. 

Van Swieten, report by, of consumption, cured by falling 
into water, 122. 

Vapor bath, mistake in, cures rheumatism, 120. 

Vertebrae, dislocated, cured by Christian Science, 89. 

Vertebrata, created by " mortal and material thought," ac- 
cording to Mrs. Eddy, 220. 

Vincent, D. D., Rev. Marvin R., report by, of a case of sup- 
posed tumor relieved by ether, 14S. 

Vis medicatrix naturae, 117. 



INDEX, 



321 



Vosburg, Rev. Arthur, apology of, for Christian Science 

worship of Mrs. Eddy, 72. 
Weather, Christian Science an alleged remedy for, 90. 
William III,, refused to touch for "King's Evil," 105-6. 
Wilmans, Helen, statement of, as to transference of thought, 

159. 

specimen treatment by, 162. 

Witch doctors, negro, may cause or cure diseases, 106. 

Wood, Dr., on influence of mind on body, 114-15. 

Woodbury, Mrs. J. C, character and prominence of, in 
ranks of Christian Science, 65; quoted, see Authors; re- 
cantation of, 65-6. 

Wordsworth, William, on preexistence of soul, 252. 

Worms, cystic, in brain, effects of, 175. 
in children, how accounted for by Christian Science, 88 ; 

and cured, 88. 
tape, may cause nervous and mental disturbances, 175. 

Youth, how to retain indefinitely, according to Christian 
Science, 96-7. 



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